中国科学院南京地质古生物研究所机构知识库

Fossil fungi are very important components for shaping the paleoecosystem, but they are rarely documented in the geological record. Here we report a well-preserved fossil mycelium consisting of clamp-bearing septate hyphae in a petrified coniferous wood (Cupressinoxylon baomiqiaoense Zheng et Zhang) from the Lower Cretaceous Yunshan Formation in Heilongjiang Province, NE China. The fungal hyphae, with a diameter of ca. 2.5 mu m, are tubular in shape with septa and clamp-connections. Taxo-nomically, the nature and occurrence of typical clamp-connections indicate that the present fungal remains be referred to the Basidiomycota. Ecologically, this fossil mycelium is proposed to be a saprotroph, i.e., a wood rotting fungus. The wood decay symptoms of the wood host strongly indicate that the present fungal mycelium to be a white-rotting fungus. This fossil mycelium represents the first fossil fungal record from the Cretaceous of Northeast China, and provides further evidence for investigating the plant-fungal interaction in the Cretaceous terrestrial ecosystem. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.