Where was the oldest palm tree fossil found?
Palms are thought to have emerged in the Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era, when dinosaurs walked the earth. The oldest palm fossil yet found was unearthed in South Carolina and dates back some 85 million years, but palms are thought to have originated in Australia.
There is evidence that coconuts originated in South America more than 60 million years ago, rather than at a later date in India as the conventional wisdom would have it.
Coconuts, it seems, are related to nipa fruit, a palm modernly native only to the South Pacific. The Paleocene fossil record shows that there used to be a much wider distribution, with finds in Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South America. The oldest fossil nipa fruit yet found now belongs to a layer of the Cerrejon site that's 60 million years old and it suggests that the ancestors of these palms and and those of the coconuts diverged before that time.
Most web sites contain some version of the story that the fossil records from New Zealand indicate that small, coconut-like plants grew there as long as 15 million years ago and that even older fossils have been uncovered in various parts of India. However, as indicated above, the fossil record suggests a much older origin.
