SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Though tomatillos look a bit like tomatoes, they taste nothing like them. Also known as "ground cherries," these fruits are part of the diverse nightshade family, which includes everything from peppers and tobacco to tomatoes. Even so, scientists are largely still in the dark about their evolutionary origins.
The plants are fairly fragile, making it rare for them to fossilize. But while excavating a site in Argentina, a group of scientists from Pennsylvania State University struck botanic jackpot recently, uncovering a pair of fossil tomatillos [DOI: 10.1126/science.aag2737] [DX]—complete with their papery husks and the remains of their fleshy interiors. This find not only sheds new light on the tart but sweet fruit, but also suggest that they are much older than researchers once thought.
[...] For years, researchers have tried to fill in the gaps using genetic analysis to try to estimate how early the nightshade family branched off. But these 52 million-year-old fossils are much, much older than scientists once thought based on genetic analysis, as Charles Davis, director of the Harvard University Herbaria tells Smithsonian.com. "The ages for the nightshades was on the order of about 30 million years, and the tomatillo group is only about nine million years based on recent age estimates," Davis says. "Here you have a fossil now within this tomatillo group that's five times as old as what we thought."
Also at Penn State.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday January 10 2017, @09:22AM
What does "in-bad-taste dept" mean? Had the editor a chance to taste them?
Suggested: "long-past-the-expiration-date dept"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 10 2017, @09:24AM
Or even: "expired-before-fabrication dept".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @09:30AM
Fossils taste like rocks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @04:33PM
Are you suggesting rock is in bad taste?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday January 10 2017, @04:58PM
Fossils taste like Jews?
--Ethanol fueled
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday January 10 2017, @04:56PM
No kidding. The big green ones you see in stores aren't the ones to get. There are small yellow ones that make a trip to the garden like a trip to the candy store.
http://www.seedsavers.org/aunt-mollys-organic-ground-cherry [seedsavers.org]
(Score: 2) by J053 on Tuesday January 10 2017, @10:26PM