There are more than a hundred ways to prepare a potato, and thousands of stories have begun with a shot of vodka distilled from this tuber. Now, science reveals the vegetable’s surprising origins: It emerged 9 million years ago as a result of an unusual hybridization between an ancestor of the tomato and an ancient South American plant. Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences conducted the most extensive genomic analysis to date on the domesticated potato. The results revealed a stable mixture of genetic material between Solanum tuberosum (the traditional potato) and an ancestor of Solanum lycopersicum (the tomato). Both the potato and the tomato share a common ancestor that lived about 13 million years ago.