Despite becoming omnipresent in almost every niche of the world , surprisingly piddling is known about the abstruse evolutionary history of the radical of plants that gave hike to potatoes , tomato plant , and baccy . Now , investigator have foundjust how far back these being go , with the discovery of a fossil relative that dates back to 52 million years ago , tens of millions of years older than previously thought .
The fossil belong to a delicate Charles Edward Berry of a plant known as a tomatillo , or land cherry . They form fruit that is often surrounded by a thin , papery lantern , making itdifficult for them to be fossilized . Members of thePhysalisgenus , they form a little branch of the nightshade family , which in turn includes many commercially important crops , from white potato and petunias to chillies and aubergines .
“ These fossils are one of a kind , since the delicate papery cover of lantern fruit are rarely continue as fossils , ” explains Mónica Carvalho , who co - authored the newspaper publisher bring out inScience , in astatement . “ Our fossils show that the evolutionary history of this flora kin is much older than previously considered , especially in South America , and they unveil important implications for interpret the variegation of the family . ”
One of the two fossils of the fruits clear show their papery lantern . Ignacio Escapa / Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio
The only fossil fruit ever found from this family of almost 2,000 species of industrial plant , the two specimen were discovered in a fossilized rainforest that once uprise across Patagonia in South America . With a deficiency of uncommitted fossils for this chemical group of plant , research worker have had to rely on molecular dates for when the nightshade plants first evolve , and had settle down on the physique of around 35 to 51 million eld honest-to-god , while the Mexican husk tomato was thought to be a relative newcomer at only 10 million years honest-to-god .
The modern ground cerise still has the classifiable fruit . punsayaporn / Shutterstock
This new discovery , however , completely changes this . The fossils , dating to 52 million yr ago , show that the land cherries are actually a relatively ancient offshoot of the nightshade family . “ We exhaustively analyzed every contingent of these fossils in comparison with all potential living congeneric and there is no question that they represent the human beings ’s first physalis fossils and the first fossil fruit of the nightshade family,”saysProfessor Peter Wilf , from Pennsylvania State University .
The fossils underpin the pauperism for investigator to be careful when deducing an being ’s evolutionary historic period entirely from molecular filaria .
