Deadly (And Delicious!) Nightshades Much Older Than Thought

The new fossil Physalis infinemundi from Laguna del Hunco in Patagonia, Argentina, is 52.2 million years old and preserves a feature familiar to anyone who grows tomatillos or groundcherries: a papery, lobed husk with visible veins. Credit: Ignacio Escapa, Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio. Preserved for more than 50 million years, a pair of fossilized tomatillos from Argentina are rewriting the story of nightshades, those sometimes deadly, sometimes delicious, sometimes hallucinogenic plants common the world over. Nightshades include tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers, belladonna, petunias and tobacco, a few of which are commonly used as plant models in scientific research, and several of which probably landed on your dinner plate recently (though hopefully not the poisonous belladonna). Aside from the fossils' gorgeous state of preservation, the new Physalis infinemundi specimens are significant because they push back the evolution of nightshades — way back.