A fossil fruit from California shows ancestors of coffee and potatoes survived cataclysm that killed the dinosaurs - Phys.org

This fossil shows this diverse group of plants, the lamiids, were older than previously thought, and Cretaceous ecosystems on the west coast of North America may have resembled structurally complex rainforests."

Located in deposits of the Chico Formation tied to the Campanian (fifth of six ages of the Late Cretaceous epoch), the fossil was collected by Richard Hilton and Patrick Antuzzi of Sierra College and housed at their natural history museum.

"I immediately recognized it as belonging to this lamiid family called Icacinaceae, which is well-known in younger, post-Cretaceous deposits after the mass-extinction event.

By scrutinizing its arrangement of ridges, pits, rows and tubercles, the KU investigator could make comparisons to previously described fossils to place it correctly within its family tree.

The KU researcher said the findings help establish that one of the most diverse flowering plant groups survived the cataclysm that killed the dinosaurs to evolve into thousands of familiar modern species, including vital food crops for humanity.

"My research involves understanding deep time to better reconcile how modern biodiversity came to be—and potentially how it will fare in the future with climate change," said Atkinson.