How Pumpkins Outlived the Mastodons Through Domestication

Why Every Pumpkin on Earth Should Have Gone Extinct 12,000 Years Ago

Evolved for Ice Age giants and toxic to almost everything else, the pumpkin should have vanished 12,000 years ago — until an unlikely ape stepped in.

Pumpkins Should Have Gone Extinct Thousands of Years Ago

Plants that produce fruit want to be eaten, because that's how they disperse their seeds. Long, long ago, the ancient ancestor of pumpkins evolved to be eaten by megafauna like mastodons. They were too bitter and toxic for creatures like humans. Besides, they had a really hard rind. Only those large animals could open the fruit, tolerate the taste, and properly spread the undigested seeds around with some handy manure for fertilizer.Then around …

How Pumpkins Outlived the Mastodons Through Domestication

PBS Eons explored how pumpkins nearly went extinct with the mastodons and other megafauna that spread their seeds, until humans domesticated them. subscribe to the Laughing Squid Newsletter The post How Pumpkins Outlived the Mastodons Through Domestication was originally published on Laughing Squid.