page_title: Coconut
section_title: Evolutionary history
hierarchical_section_title: Coconut / History / Evolutionary history
caption_attribution_description: English: Cocos zeylanica (Miocene). Collected 1959, Doubtless Bay, near Kaitaia. Collection of the Whanganui Regional Museum, 1959.196.
context_page_description: The coconut tree is a member of the palm tree family and the only living species of the genus Cocos. The term "coconut" can refer to the whole coconut palm, the seed, or the fruit, which botanically is a drupe, not a nut. The name comes from the old Portuguese and Spanish word coco, meaning 'head' or 'skull' after the three indentations on the coconut shell that resemble facial features. They are ubiquitous in coastal tropical regions, and are a cultural icon of the tropics.
  It is one of the most useful trees in the world, and is often referred to as the "tree of life". It provides food, fuel, cosmetics, folk medicine and building materials, among many other uses. The inner flesh of the mature seed, as well as the coconut milk extracted from it, forms a regular part of the diets of many people in the tropics and subtropics. Coconuts are distinct from other fruits because their endosperm contains a large quantity of clear liquid, called coconut water or coconut juice. Mature, ripe coconuts can be used as edible seeds, or processed for oil and plant milk from the flesh, charcoal from the hard shell, and coir from the fibrous husk.
context_section_description: The evolutionary history and fossil distribution of Cocos nucifera and other members of the tribe Cocoseae is more ambiguous than modern-day dispersal and distribution, with its ultimate origin and pre-human dispersal still unclear. There are currently two major viewpoints on the origins of the genus Cocos, one in the Indo-Pacific, and another in South America. The vast majority of Cocos-like fossils have been recovered generally from only two regions in the world: New Zealand and west-central India. However, like most palm fossils, Cocos-like fossils are still putative, as they are usually difficult to identify.
  The earliest Cocos-like fossil to be found was "Cocos" zeylanica, a fossil species described from small fruits, around 3.5 cm (1.4 in) × 1.3 to 2.5 cm (0.51 to 0.98 in) in size, recovered from the Miocene (~23 to 5.3 million years ago) of New Zealand in 1926. Since then, numerous other fossils of similar fruits were recovered throughout New Zealand from the Eocene, Oligocene, and possibly the Holocene. But research on them is still ongoing to determine which of them (if any) actually belong to the genus Cocos. Endt & Hayward (1997) have noted their resemblance to members of the South American genus Parajubaea, rather than Cocos, and propose a South American origin. Conran et al. (2015), however, suggests that their diversity in New Zealand indicate that they evolved endemically, rather than being introduced to the islands by long-distance dispersal. In west-central India, numerous fossils of Cocos-like fruits, leaves, and stems have been recovered from the Deccan Traps. They include morphotaxa like Palmoxylon sundaran, Palmoxylon insignae, and Palmocarpon cocoides. Cocos-like fossils of fruits include "Cocos" intertrappeansis, "Cocos" pantii, and "Cocos" sahnii. They also include fossil fruits that have been tentatively identified as modern Cocos nucifera. These includes two specimens named "Cocos" palaeonucifera and "Cocos" binoriensis, both were dated by their authors to the Maastrichtian–Danian of the early Tertiary (70 to 62 million years ago). C. binoriensis has been claimed by their authors to be the earliest known fossil of Cocos nucifera.
  Outside of New Zealand and India, only two other regions have reported Cocos-like fossils, namely Australia and Colombia. In Australia, a Cocos-like fossil fruit, measuring 10 cm (3.9 in) × 9.5 cm (3.7 in), were recovered from the Chinchilla Sand Formation dated to the latest Pliocene or basal Pleistocene. Rigby (1995) assigned them to modern Cocos nucifera based on its size. In Colombia, a single Cocos-like fruit was recovered from the middle to late Paleocene Cerrejón Formation. The fruit however was compacted in the fossilization process and it was not possible to determine if it had the diagnostic three pores that characterize members of the tribe Cocoseae. Nevertheless, the authors Gomez-Navarro et al. (2009), assigned it to Cocos based on the size and the ridged shape of the fruit.
caption: Fossil "Cocos" zeylanica from the Miocene of New Zealand, approximately the size of a strawberry at 3.5 cm (1 1⁄2 in) long
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