Tomato Ancestor Discovered Near Antarctica A Million Years Ago [VIDEO]

• comments
• 
• 

An international researcher discovered a fossil of tomatillos in Patagonia stones, Argentina. The fossils found still belongs to the nightshades or the Solanaceae which includes eggplants, tomatoes, peppers, tobaccos, potatoes, and petunias which have been existed fifty-two million years ago.

Members of the physalis genus, ground cherries, tomatillos and husk tomatoes are uncommon because they've lantern-like husks, papery and acknowledged to botanists as inflated calyces that grow after fertilization to extend around their fleshy, often suitable for eating berries. The small part of the nightshades family, extensively has a poor fossil report, due to the tiny seeds and wooden with little diagnostics value that significantly restrained information of when and wherein it growth. However these small parts of the nightshade family, scientifically, commercially and culturally are a precious plant among 2,400 living species.

The two fossils are the only physalis fossils found among more than six thousand fossils collected from Laguna del Hunco, Chubut, Patagonia. The area was temperate rain forest when the plants grew about a fifty-two millions years ago and has been the main focus of a Cornell University, Penn State, Museo Paleontologic Egidio Feruglio, Trelew, and Argentina project for over a decade and was a part of terminal Gondwana, the ancient supercontinent comprised of the adjacent landmasses of South America, Antarctica and Australia throughout a heat period of Earth history, simply before their final separation.

A Penn State's professor, Peter Wilf said in Science "These incredible, extraordinarily rare specimens of physalis fruits are the only two fossils recognized of the entire nightshade family that holds enough records to be assigned to a genus within the family,"

He also stated "We exhaustively analyzed every detail of these fossils in comparison with all potential living family and there is absolute confidence that they represent the world's first physalis fossils and the first fossil fruits of the nightshade family. Physalis sits close to the suggestions of the nightshade family's evolutionary tree, which means that the nightshades as a whole, opposite to what was thought, are far older than fifty-two million years."