oldest fungi yet found

[Nick B]

BBC article on oldest fungi, or possibly different branch of life

If this turns out to be a different branch of life it could be interesting.

 

[J Riff]

Isn't that something... and here I wrote a SS some years back, about an evil fungus creature - 'the oldest living thing on Earth' - which terrorizes our MC - an obssesive SF book collector.
The best part of this article - "but we know very little about its biology and even less about its evolutionary history." Honesty in science! * )

 

[Liz Bent]

That's really neat! It's impossible to know if these fossil organisms were eukaryotes or prokaryotes- I suspect cell details like whether they have nuclei have been obliterated- so it's hard to say if they represent a new lineage of bacteria, a new lineage of fungi, or some other kind of organism altogether. It is a pity no one currently knows how to pull DNA sequences out of fossil rocks. If anyone ever figures that particular puzzle out, the amount of information we could gather on past life on Earth is staggering. What we need, in the absence of such technology, is a living version of these fossil creatures, and unfortunately it's hard to explore the deep sea floor.