Published in

American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science, 5857(318), p. 1743-1743, 2007

DOI: 10.1126/science.1149947

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Carnivorous Fungi from Cretaceous Amber

Journal article published in 2007 by Alexander R. Schmidt, Heinrich Dörfelt, Vincent Perrichot ORCID
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Red circle
Published version: archiving forbidden
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Carnivorous fungi dating back to the age of the dinosaurs have been found fossilized in circa-100-million-year-old amber. The fossil fungi used hyphal rings as trapping devices and are preserved together with their prey, small nematodes. The excellent preservation in amber allowed comparison with extant groups: On the basis of the mode of ring formation and the dimorphic mode of life, the fossils cannot be assigned to any recent carnivorous fungus, providing evidence that different groups occupied this ecological niche in the Cretaceous and that trapping devices were developed independently multiple times in the course of Earth history.