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Until now, it was believed that plants of the grape family arrived at the European continent less than 23 million years ago. A study on fossil plants draws a new scenario on the dispersal of the ancestors of grape plants and reveals that these species were already on the territory of Europe some 41 million years ago.

The paper describes a new fossil species of the same family, Nekemias mucronata, which allows us to better understand the evolutionary history of this plant group, which inhabited Europe between 40 and 23 million years ago.

A new ancestor of the grape family

The grape family (Vitaceae) is made up of some 950 species, and is divided into five tribes (in botany, this is an intermediate taxonomic classification between the family and the genus). One of these tribes is the Viteae, made up of 200 species, including the grape vine plant (Vitis vinifera), which is of great global economic interest. The new paper published in the JSE focuses on studying the tribe Ampelopsideae, made up of 47 species.

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