Reporter : Wang Jueping / http://news.sciencenet.cn/htmlnews/2021/2/453362.shtm / Direct translation
Researchers from China and the United States recently discovered a fungus-like biological fossil 630 million years ago in Guizhou. This is the earliest terrestrial fungal fossil found in the world so far. It shows that the ancestors of fungal organisms such as mushrooms, yeasts, and penicillium have "climbed" from the ocean to land more than 600 million years ago.
Pang Ke, an associate researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who participated in the study, said that the newly discovered fungal fossils are located in two dolomite karst caves in Weng'an County, Guizhou Province. The researchers collected a total of 20 rock samples and obtained thousands of tiny fungal fossil filaments less than the thickness of a human hair. Previously, the earliest terrestrial fungus was found in Scotland, about 410 million years old. The newly discovered fossils pushed the fossil record of terrestrial fungi forward by more than 200 million years.
The research team also discovered that this ancient fungal fossil 630 million years ago is mainly composed of two parts. One part is a hollow filament with a length of hundreds of microns, and the other part is a hollow pellet with a diameter of 10 to 26 microns connected between the filaments. Researchers have speculated through comparison with similar modern fungi that the filaments may be the hyphae of fungal organisms, and the hollow globules may be asexual spores used for reproduction.
"The arrival of organisms from the ocean on land is an important turning point in the history of life evolution. Fungi are called 'pioneers' and play an important role in the process of land from barrenness to vitality. The land was discovered 630 million years ago. Fungi are more than 100 million years earlier than the earliest terrestrial higher plant fossils. This is also of great significance to our study of the early terrestrial environment and life evolution." Panke said.
The research was completed in cooperation with Chinese and foreign scientific research institutions such as the Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, and Virginia Tech. Related research results have been published in the international authoritative journal "Nature Communications" recently.
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