The discovery of the oldest fungi that inhabited land 810 million years ago

Mohammed Shaban

The mystery of the origins and evolution of life on Earth’s surface remains elusive, which leads to the question: How did complex life begin in the humid ocean depths? How did you find it on land?

Scientists believe that this event began 541 million years ago, as the origin of the fungi kingdom - likely to be the main partner of the first plants that colonized the Earth's surface - remains very mysterious. Until now, only 2% of fungi have been identified, due to their sensitive nature that makes obtaining Its fossils are extremely rare and difficult to distinguish from other microorganisms.

Scientists attribute the age of the oldest fossil of fungi to 460 million years, but some fossils - which have been silent for decades in a Belgian museum - decided to answer this question, as a new study indicated that these fossils are fungal structures dating from 715 to 810 million years , Which makes it one of the oldest known fungi to this day.

Scientists have re-analyzed the fossils collected from the Republic of the Congo years ago, which led to this exciting discovery of how old the fungi were, which was published in the journal Science Adventures on January 22.

The timing of the emergence of fungi
The importance of this discovery speaks of the geologist Steve Bonneville - the study participant from the University of Lieber de Brussels - as reported by the Science Alert website, saying that "such an exciting discovery prompts us to review the timeline of the evolution of living things on the surface of the Earth."

As we knew before, the fungi were present when the first plants began to appear, that is, about 500 to 600 million years ago, but the molecular clock of the fungi tells us that they appeared earlier than that.

Scientists use the molecular clock as an indicator to determine the evolutionary history of the organism, by measuring the rate of mutation of biomolecules in the DNA of the organism, so if the fungi appeared at the same time as plants appeared, the molecular clock of fungi would tell us that.

But the molecular clock of fungi shows that they appeared more than a billion years ago, which represents a great mystery between what the fossil record dates and what the molecular clock indicates.

The remains of fossil fossil filaments - or what is known as fungal yarn - were discovered in rocks dating from 715 to 810 million years, the same period as life was in its infancy stage on land, as these ancient discovered rocks were formed in a lake or environment Coastal.

“The presence of fungi in this transitional zone between water and land causes us to believe that this microscopic fungus was an important partner of the first plants that colonized the Earth’s surface,” Bongill said.

Organic remains key to the puzzle
It is reported that previous research used chemotherapy to identify fungal fossils found in rocks, which "damages the organic compounds of fungi fossils, which leads to incorrect interpretations of fungi that depend only on the morphological properties that may share many different organisms" Bonneville also explains to PhysOrg.

Therefore, scientists in this study used new techniques such as fluorescent microscopy and electron microscopy, as well as spectroscopy of synchrotron radiation to search for any organic residues of fungi in rocks, which they have already found in the form of ketin compound, which is the main compound of the walls of fungal cells.

On the importance of this study, Cranendonck, who is not involved in the study and geologist at the University of New South Wales, added that "this discovery tells us what fungi were, which may help in exploring other lives outside the borders of the globe."