Do you like eating mushrooms? What if by mistake you’ve been eating mushrooms that could be millions of years old, unlike your average cabbage that was grown may be a few months ago? Well, you can do nothing much about it.
An Oregon scientist and a Kentucky nurse (sounds like a romantic film) have found the oldest known mushroom; more than 100 million years ago. It was encased in a similarly old amber. Now, amber is a parasite. Mushroom is a parasite. On a closure, microscopic, that is, observation, the scientist discovered that the mushroom too had a parasite on it.
“I was amazed enough with the mushroom,” said George Poinar, a retired entomology professor in Corvallis. “But then seeing the parasites was astonishing. No one has ever seen this three-tier association before.”
…
“This shows how far back mushrooms — and the parasites that infect them — go,” Poinar said. “They’re similar to pinwheel mushrooms that grow on the bark of modern trees. They dotted the trees 100 million years ago, so they probably were tasty treats for the dinosaurs to nibble on.”
Technorati Tags: mushrooms, ancient mushrooms, 100 million years, fossils, pre historic mushrooms
Comments on this entry are closed.