Like wine? Maybe I should thank the extinction of the dinosaurs.

If you’re a wine lover who can’t resist a nice glass at the end of a long day at work, you may have the extinction of the dinosaurs to thank. According to a recent study published in the journal Nature Plants, there may be a link between the species’ extinction and grapes. By analyzing grape seed fossils, researchers have discovered that grape seeds began to spread around the world just years after the dinosaurs went extinct.

“The remarkably diverse plant communities of the Neotropics are the result of diversification driven by a variety of biotic (e.g. speciation, extinction, and dispersal) and abiotic (e.g. climate and tectonic) processes,” the paper says.

Researchers used grape seed fossils, the first of their kind found in Central and South America, to identify nine species of grape vines in Colombia, Panama and Peru. One of the fossils, more than 60 million years old, is the oldest known in the Western Hemisphere and one of the oldest in the world.

According to Wine SpectatorIn 2022, Fabiani Herrera and Monica Carvalho, two scientists involved in the study, found the oldest grape fossil in the West. It was in a 60-million-year-old rock in the Colombian Andes. After identifying the fossil by its appearance, Herrera and Carvalho used CT scans to see its interior, confirming that it was, in fact, a grape seed, and giving the species the name Lithouva susmanii, after the patron saint of the Field Museum, Arthur Susman.

Stephen Manchester, another of the researchers, realized that the oldest grape fossil, found in India in 2013, was six million years older than the one his colleagues had found. There’s a reason for that, according to the research, and it’s linked to major extinctions over the past 66 million years.

Also, about 66 million years ago, a huge asteroid collided with Earth, causing the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which wiped out all non-avian dinosaur species on the planet.

“We always think of dinosaurs because they suffered the most, but the extinction event also had a huge impact on plants. The forest came back, changing the composition of plants,” Herrera explained.

These researchers suggest that without dinosaurs to chop down trees, forests became denser, meaning grapevines had more trunks and branches to climb and thrive on. Additionally, the increasing number of grape-eating birds and mammals may have helped spread grapevine seeds.

“The fossil record tells us that grapes are a very resilient species. They are a group that has survived multiple extinctions in parts of Central and South America, but have also managed to adapt and survive in other parts of the world.”