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Researchers have found fossilized remains of a peach dating back more than 2.5 million years. This peach has been the oldest ever found. The oldest record of a fruit goes back 8,000 years found in the Chinese archaeological records. According to a study published in Scientific reports, the pits were found by Tao Su, lead author of the paper and associate professor at Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden. These pits were discovered near a bus station in Southwest China where the construction work revealed the rocks from the late Pliocene period.

Even though they are millions of years old, the pits found were similar to the ones that are found in the modern age. Since the modern humans do not go back than 250,000 years ago and the cultivation is only 10,000 years old, it means that the peach would have evolved to its modern state without much help from the humans. "Is the peach we see today something that resulted from artificial breeding under agriculture since prehistory, or did it evolve under natural selection? The answer is really both," Peter Wilf, a professor of paleo botany at Penn State and co-author of the article, revealed in a statement. "The peach was a witness to the human colonization of China," Wilf continued. "It was there before humans, and through history we adapted to it and it to us."

The authors of the paper, including Wilf, concluded that the history of the fruit is long that also solidifies the belief that peaches originated in China. The tasty and fleshy fruit may have traveled far and wide through the droppings from the beaks and animals and were most suitable for the earth to flourish, reports the Washington Post.