Nathaniel Thomas Stucki
Blog Post
Biology 1610
Salsa Primeval: 52-Million-Year-Old Tomatillo Found
Many of you like Café Rio right? I
mean come on have you ever tried their house dressing, It’s fantastic! A few
months ago I decided to Try and make this house dressing on my own and I was introduced
to the fruit tomatillo. While looking for an Article to write about that was
difficult to find something that I was truly interested and that I can understand.
This article, written by Lucas Vionna on January 11, 2017, was just that
article. This article reveals a discovery made in Patagonia about what is now the
oldest known evidence of a plant within the genus Physalis plant group. This
discovery does a lot, not only for the dating of this specific fruit, but also
this discovery as evidence of a supposed massive ancient supercontinent call
Pangea.
Located
at the Laguna Del Hunco, this Discovery dates the tomatillo 30 million years
older then had previously been thought. This fruit dates back to just over 52
million years ago. On top of all that,
this tomatillo wasn’t some old, extreme version of the modern fruit we know it
today, but it was extremely similar. We would usually think that a lot of of
evolution what happened over the 15-million-year time period, But this this
convincing evidence against that, At least with this fruit. The tomatillo this part
of the Solanaceae Group of plants which is also an extremely important fact
because scientists have found that the tomatillo in its modern form is one of
the latest in the Solanaceae Group, With states it back even farther!
Me personally, I don’t know how this can help
us out in today’s day and age. Obviously,
this is more knowledge for us to draw from and I don’t know maybe because of
this discovery we can learn characteristics about evolution that can help us
make a brighter and healthier future focused on making these fruits more
tolerant to droughts and resistant to pathogens.
It amazes me how much scientist are still
discovering and figuring out and It is wonderful to see discoveries being made.
Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/salsa-primeval-52-million-year-old-tomatillo-found/
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ReplyDeleteWow. That's one really old fruit! It's incredible to imagine that an organism could be so similar to what we have today, 52 million years later. I'm curious; in what medium was the tamatillo preserved? Was it Fossilized? (Sariah Saili)
ReplyDeleteHi Sariah! Thanks for the question. I had no idea what the medium was when I read your question. In fact, there is no mention of a medium in the actual article just a place, which was in Patagonia. Your question made me curious so I did some research and found that the fossil was found in limestone in the ancient remains of a seabed. The fossil itself is mostly made of coal which is interesting and probes me to wonder why the organic material changed in that way.
DeleteSource of the answer: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/01/10/509171881/52-million-year-old-tomatillo-fossil-rewrites-veggie-history
Interesting! Yeah, I haven't studied geology?... enough to know why it would change in that way either. Thanks for answering. (Sariah)
Delete