Refuting Creationism - Evolutionary History of the Grape is Enough to Make Creationists Wine

Nekemias mucronata sp. nov. Complete leaflet
Scale bar: 1 cm.

Tosal, A. Vicente, A. & Denk, T. (2024)

Nekemias mucronata fossil lateral leaflets from the collection of the Natural Science Museum of Barcelona.

Reconstructing the evolutionary history of the grape family

For today's refutation of creationism, we have the history of the grape, stretching back to between 40 and 23 million years before creationists think Earth was created.

Like almost everything else about the history of life in Earth, the evolution of the modern grape took place in the 99.9975% of time that preceded 'Creation Week' when creationism's little god made a small, flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East.

This history has now been reconstructed by a team of three palaeontologists led by Aixa Tosal, from the Faculty of Earth Sciences and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona, with Alba Vicente, also from the University of Barcelona, and Thomas Denk from the Swedish Museum of Natural History (Stockholm).

What information do you have on the evolution and classification of the plant family which includes the modern grape? The plant family that includes the modern grape is Vitaceae,commonly known as the grape family. Vitaceae consists of woody vines, shrubs, and, in some cases, herbaceous plants. Here's an overview of its evolution and classification:

Evolution of Vitaceae

1. Origins and Fossil Record:
   • Vitaceae likely originated in the Late Cretaceous period, about 80–100 million years ago. Fossil evidence of Vitaceae dates back to the Paleocene and Eocene epochs, indicating that the family is ancient.
   • Fossils of plants resembling modern grape vines have been discovered in North America, Europe, and Asia, pointing to a wide prehistoric distribution of the family.
   
   
2. Diversification:
   • After its origin, Vitaceae underwent a significant diversification during the Tertiary period. This is the time when many modern genera began to appear.
   • The grape family diversified in response to environmental changes and the opening up of new habitats. Its members developed various strategies for climbing and clinging to other plants, which helped them thrive in different ecological niches.
   
   
3. Adaptations:
   • The primary adaptation of many Vitaceae members is their tendrils,which allow the plants to climb and access sunlight in forested environments.
   • Some species developed fleshy, edible fruits (like grapes), aiding in seed dispersal by animals, which further helped their spread and diversification.

Classification of Vitaceae

• The Vitaceae family is classified under the order Vitales,and it includes around 14 genera and over 900 species. The most important genus is Vitis,which includes the common grapevine (Vitis vinifera).

Key Genera in Vitaceae

1. Vitis: This genus contains the commercially important grape species used in winemaking, food production, and ornamental gardening.
2. Ampelopsis: Known for ornamental vines with clusters of small berries, some of which are toxic.
3. Parthenocissus: This includes the Virginia creeper and Boston ivy, widely used as ornamental climbing plants.
4. Cissus: A tropical genus of vines often grown as houseplants.

Taxonomic Hierarchy

• Kingdom: Plantae
• Clade: Angiosperms
• Clade: Eudicots
• Clade: Rosids
• Order: Vitales
• Family: Vitaceae

Vitis vinifera (Common Grape Vine)

• This species is one of the oldest domesticated plants, with evidence of cultivation dating back to around 6,000–8,000 years in the Near East.
• Vitis vinifera has two main subspecies: V. vinifera subsp. vinifera (the cultivated grape) and V. vinifera subsp. sylvestris (the wild ancestor).

Evolutionary Relationships

Vitaceae has close evolutionary relationships with several other families of plants, but its nearest relatives lie within the order Vitales, which is considered a sister group to the order Sapindales (which includes maples and horse chestnuts). This grouping places Vitaceae among the early-diverging lineages of rosids, making them distinct from other eudicot groups.

Would you like more details on the domestication of grapes or the characteristics of the Vitaceae family?

The team have just published their findings in the Journal of Systematics and Evolution and announced them in a press release from Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat, Universitat de Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain.

Reconstructing the evolutionary history of the grape family

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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.

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This study, published in the Journal of Systematics and Evolution (JSE), is led by researcher Aixa Tosal, from the Faculty of Earth Sciences and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona. The article is also signed by Alba Vicente, from the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) and the Catalan Institute of Palaeontology Miquel Crusafont (ICP), and Thomas Denk, from the Swedish Museum of Natural History (Stockholm).

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.

Our study changes the paradigms accepted until now and shows that the Ampelopsis and Nekemias lineages of the Ampelopsideae tribe were already present in Europe and Central Asia during the middle Eocene (between 47 and 37 million years ago). This indicates that this dispersal was approximately 20 million years earlier than previously estimated. In particular, we show that a lineage now restricted to North America already existed in Europe and Central Asia, thanks to the discovery of the fossil species Nekemias mucronata, which is very similar to the present-day North American Nekemias arborea. Nekemias mucronata cohabited with Ampelopsis hibschii, the closest relative of today’s Ampelopsis orientalis.

Aixa Tosal, lead author
Departament de Dinàmica de la Terra i de l′Oceà (DDTO)
Facultat de Ciències de la Terra
Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Barcelona, Spain.

In contrast, the latter has had a different dispersal from N. mucronata, as this lineage is now endemic to the eastern Mediterranean.

This study helps us to better understand the evolution of the Ampelopsideae tribe during the second dispersal pulse, especially in Europe and Central Asia, which took place during the Palaeogene

Aixa Tosal.

Nekemias mucronata lived from the late Eocene to the late Oligocene (37-23 million years ago). It seems that it was able to grow in a broad range of climates, from regions with low winter temperatures (-4.6 °C in cold periods) — such as those found in Kazakhstan during the Oligocene (33-23) million years ago — to regions with warm mean annual temperatures — such as those of the Oligocene in the Iberian Peninsula — or even in climates with intermediate temperatures such as those recorded in the centre of the European continent.

To date, the oldest record of the grape family has been found in the Upper Cretaceous deposits of India (75-65 Ma). The earliest record of the plant lineage in the Americas is from the Upper Eocene, around 39.4 million years ago, and at about the same time in Europe and Central Asia the Ampelopsis and Nekemias lineages are already found.

N. mucronata was also not overly demanding in terms of rainfall. It could grow in areas with abundant rainfall and low rainfall seasonality; for example, in Central Europe during the Oligocene, or the Iberian Peninsula or Greece during the same time. This fossil species had a compound leaf, a peculiarity shared with some species of the vine family. Although it is difficult to confirm the number of leaflets of the compound leaf, it would have consisted of at least three. We have been able to recognize common patterns between the apical and lateral leaflets, which allows us to distinguish them from other fossil species of the vine family in Eurasia. What makes Nekemias mucronata unique is the presence of a mucro at the tip of the leaflet teeth, which gives the species its name. The straight shape of the base of the apical leaflet is also quite distinctive, as all other Eurasian fossil species are buckled (with an invagination near the petiole).

Alba Vicente, co-author
Departament de Dinàmica de la Terra i de l′Oceà (DDTO)
Facultat de Ciències de la Terra
Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Barcelona, Spain.

Dispersal of Ampelopsideae across the Atlantic bridge or the Bering Strait

How did these species disperse in the past? These tribes diverged between the Upper Cretaceous and the Upper Eocene and, although there are still many unknowns, it seems that they dispersed and evolved quite rapidly.

[According to current data, which are consistent with the molecular clock technique,] the Ampelopsideae could have followed two cluster routes or a mixture of both. The first proposed route follows the North Atlantic isthmus. That is, the family appeared in India, then moved on to central Asia and Europe during the middle Eocene (between 47 and 37 million years ago), and finally moved on to the Americas via Greenland. Another possible route suggests that, once the Vitaceae family appeared in India, the Ampelopsideae tribe dispersed eastward from Asia during the middle Eocene (47-37 million years ago) and quickly moved to the Americas via the Bering Strait, and from there to Europe along the North Atlantic isthmus.

Thomas Denk, co-author
Department of Palaeobiology
Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, Sweden.

Although the dispersal of these two species does not seem to be linked to climate, it is possible that the increase in aridity during the Oligocene in the Iberian Peninsula and southern Europe explains the extinction (27-23 million years ago) of the last population of N. mucronata found in the Iberian Peninsula. In parallel, Ampelopsis hibschii was restricted to the Balkan area and finally became extinct about 15 million years ago.

However, there are still many unanswered questions about the early dispersal phases (from the Late Cretaceous to the Palaeogene). For this reason, we would like to continue studying this family, and perhaps we will be able to unravel what happened during their early cluster phases, which occurred between 66 and 41 million years ago

the team concludes.

Reference article:

Tosal, Aixa; Vicente, Alba; Denk, Thomas.
Cenozoic Ampelopsis and Nekemias leaves (Vitaceae, Ampelopsideae) from Eurasia: Paleobiogeographic and paleoclimatic implications.
Journal of Systematics and Evolution, August 2024. DOI: 10.1111/jse.13126.

Abstract
We describe a new species of Ampelopsideae (Vitaceae), Nekemias mucronata sp. nov., from the Rupelian of Cervera (Spain) and revise another fossil species, Ampelopsis hibschii, originally described from Germany. Comparison with extant Ampelopsideae suggests that the North American species Nekemias arborea is most similar to Nekemias mucronata while the East Mediterranean Ampelopsis orientalis is the closest living relative of A. hibschii. Our review of fossil data indicates that, during the Eocene, four species of Ampelopsideae occurred in Eurasia, that is, N. mucronata in the Czech Republic, A. hibschii in Kazakhstan, and two fossil species in the Far East (Ampelopsis cercidifolia and Ampelopsis protoheterophylla). In the Oligocene, a new species, Ampelopsis schischkinii, appeared in Kazakhstan; meanwhile, N. mucronata spread eastwards and southwards, and A. hibschii mainly grew in Central Europe. In the late Oligocene, N. mucronata became a relict in the Iberian Peninsula and Nekemias might have persisted in Western Eurasia until the latest Miocene (“Ampelopsis” abkhasica). The last occurrence of A. hibschii was in the Middle Miocene in Bulgaria, probably a refuge of humid temperate taxa, along with Ampelopsis aff. cordata. Carpological remains suggest that this lineage persisted in Europe at least until the Pleistocene. Our data confirm previous notions of the North Atlantic and Bering land bridges being important dispersal routes for Ampelopsideae. However, such dispersion probably occurred during the Paleogene rather than the Neogene, as previously suggested. A single species of Ampelopsideae, A. orientalis, has survived in Western Eurasia, which appears to have been linked to a biome shift.

1 Introduction
Vitaceae Jussieu (the grape family) is a plant family with about 15 genera and 950 species with leaves ranging from simple to compound (Chen & Manchester, 2007; Jones et al., 2013). It is mainly distributed in Southern Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Pacific islands, with only a few species reported in temperate regions (Süssenguth, 1953; Chen et al., 2007.1; Wen, 2007.2). Recent phylogenetic studies of Vitaceae have provided a framework for its infrafamilial relationships and the biogeographic diversification of the family (e.g., Rossetto et al., 2001, 2002, 2007.3; Ingrouille et al., 2002.1; Soejima & Wen, 2006; Wen et al., 2007.2, 2013.1, 2018; Chen, 2009; Lu et al., 2018.1). The phylogenetic data supports five major clades within Vitaceae referred to as tribes: (i) Ampelopsideae, (ii) Parthenocisseae, (iii) Viteae, (iv) Cisseae, and (v) Cayratieae (Wen et al., 2018).

The Ampelopsideae is a relatively small tribe within Vitaceae and comprises 47 species distributed in Asia, Europe, America, Africa, and Australia (Soejima & Wen, 2006; Wen et al., 2007.4, 2013.1, 2018; Ren et al., 2011; Nie et al., 2012; Liu et al., 2013.2). The origin of the tribe is still under debate. Based on a time-calibrated phylogeny by Nie et al. (2012), the Ampelopsideae presumably appeared during the late Paleocene–Early Miocene (61.0–23.4 Ma) in North America (Manchester, 1994; Manchester & McIntosh, 2007.5; Nie et al., 2012). An alternative hypothesis was proposed based on late Cretaceous fossil seeds found in India with anatomical features characteristic of different extant Vitaceae tribes (Manchester et al., 2013.3). These similarities suggested that these seeds could be ancestral to the modern Ampelopsideae (Manchester et al., 2013.3). Based on this, it was suggested that the tribe Ampelopsideae originated during the Cretaceous in India (Southern Hemisphere) rather than during the Paleocene–Early Miocene in North America (Northern Hemisphere), as was previously claimed.

Prior to the valid publication of Wen et al. (2018), the tribe Ampelopsideae was informally referred to as the Ampelopsis clade and was divided into three groups (North I, North II, and South) based on phylogenies from chloroplast and nuclear markers (Nie et al., 2012). Ampelopsis and Nekemias, two important genera in this clade, belong to the North I and North II groups, which include the modern Northern Hemispheric taxa of the Ampelopsideae.

Nuclear data provided strong support for a paraphyletic Ampelopsis; therefore, the traditional Ampelopsis was split into two genera, Ampelopsis s.s. A. Rich. ex Michx. and Nekemias Raf. (Wen et al., 2014). These genera can be distinguished by their leaf architecture (Wen et al., 2018; Gray, 2019). Ampelopsis leaves are simple, trifoliate, or palmately compound, while those in Nekemias are pinnately compound (Wen et al., 2014). One exception to this rule is the western Asian species Ampelopsis orientalis (Lam.) Planch., which has bipinnate leaves with leaflets usually arranged in groups of three but belongs to Ampelopsis s.s. based on molecular data (Hearn et al., 2018.2). Molecular phylogenetic studies further suggest that the compound leaves and the venation pattern of Nekemias and Ampelopsis are the most ancestral character states in Vitaceae (Wen et al., 2018).

In Europe, the occurrence of Ampelopsis s.s. dates back to the Paleocene/Eocene based on unambiguous records of reproductive structures (Mai, 1995; Collinson et al., 2012.1). The oldest leaf fossils with clear affinity to the Ampelopsideae date back to the Oligocene (Bůžek et al., 1981). These authors described several fossil leaflets with intact cuticle from the Czech Republic (České Středohoříi) and Germany (Haselbach, Schichten, and Seifhennersdorf) and assigned them to Ampelopsis hibschii Bůžek, Kvaček et Walther. In some of the leaf-bearing strata, seeds, and pollen grains of Ampelopsis were also found, confirming the presence of this genus in Central Europe during the late Paleogene. Bůžek et al. (1981) suggested that A. hibschii dispersed southwards and westwards along with other Arctotertiary floral elements during the Oligocene in response to the cooling event that characterized the Eocene–Oligocene Transition (EOT). Thereafter, A. hibschii remained in this paleogeographic area together with Ampelopsis aff. cordata Bozukov being an indicator of the Western and Central European bioprovince until the Middle Miocene, when its area became restricted to refugia in the Balkans (e.g., Satovcha, Bulgaria; Bozukov, 2000). Carpological studies indicate that Ampelopsis persisted in Central Europe until the Pleistocene (Dunarobba, Central Italy, Pini et al., 2014.1; Cheb Basin, Czech Republic; Teodoridis et al., 2017). Unlike for Ampelopsis, there is no fossil record of Nekemias to date.

In Asia, the fossil record of Ampelopsideae is sparser than in Europe. The oldest leaf record dates back to the Middle Eocene (Kodrul, 1999). This author described a new species from the Russian Far East (Ampelopsis protoheterophylla Kodrul) with leaf morphological affinities with Ampelopsis glandulosa var. heterophylla (Thunb.) Momiy. Based on the fossil assemblage, this fossil species was part of a warm-temperate, mesophilic, and deciduous flora (Akhmetiev, 2007.5). The Ampelopsis lineage persisted in the North Pacific region until the Neogene: Ampelopsis cercidifolia Budants (Budantsev, 1997) in late Eocene, Ampelopsis angulata Pavlyut (Pavlyutkin et al., 2014.2) in Oligocene, Ampelopsis amgensis Klimova (Krassilov, 1984) in Miocene, and Ampelopsis populifolia Hu et Chaney (Hu & Chaney, 1940) in Late Miocene deposits. Notably, all these fossil species have been considered closely similar to the extant species A. glandulosa (Wall.) Momiy., which has a modern range that overlaps with the ranges of the fossil species.

In the present study, we describe a new Western Eurasian leaf fossil species of Ampelopsideae, which we assigned to the genus Nekemias based on a detailed analysis of the leaf architecture. Second, the original material of A. hibschii from the Czech Republic and Germany was reassessed and other Eurasian records of Ampelopsis were reviewed. Third, the relationships were established between the fossil species studied and modern members of Ampelopsideae. Fourth, the paleogeographic distribution of the fossil leaf species across the Cenozoic in Eurasia was analyzed and compared to the modern ranges of genera in the Ampelopsideae. Finally, the particular climate types that characterized the fossil species' ranges were assessed.

Figure 2
Apical leaflets of Nekemias mucronata sp. nov. A, Complete leaflet corresponding to the holotype MGB 33090. B, Paratype, MGB 85001b showing rounded base and a mucro at the tooth tip. C, Paratype, MGB 85002 displaying craspedodromous secondary venation pattern. Scale: 1 cm.

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Figure 3
Lateral leaflets of Nekemias mucronata sp. nov. stored at the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona. A, Paratype with a complete symmetric leaflet showing the first pair of secondary veins rising from the base MGB 94211. B, Complete leaflet showing the petiole still attached and the mucro at the tooth tip, MGB 85007. C, Paratype MGB 85010 displaying well-preserved tertiary venation framework. (D–F) Evolution of lobe development. D, little developed MGB 85008b; E, MGB 94212 with a lobe more developed than the other side; and F, MGB 94210 with a lobe significantly more developed than the other side. Scale: 1 cm.

Tosal, A., Vicente, A. and Denk, T. (2024)
Cenozoic Ampelopsis and Nekemias leaves (Vitaceae, Ampelopsideae) from Eurasia: Paleobiogeographic and paleoclimatic implications. J. Syst. Evol.. https://doi.org/10.1111/jse.13126.

Copyright: © 2024 The authors.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

So, evidence of radiation from an ancestral stock and adaptation to different niches as they were encountered as the Vitacea family spread to all continents except antarctica, all taking place during the 61-23 million years before creationism's little god made of nothing created a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East, allegedly out of nothing.

Apart from that embarrassing fact, there is another little matter for creationists to explain: how did these vines survive a global genocidal flood which meant they would have been submerged in brackish water for a year. Maybe they used the same trick that olive trees used!

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