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Amber Alert

Scientists Discover Ancient Meat-Eating Mushroom

Researchers at Berlin's Humboldt University may have discovered something new in ancient amber: the oldest known carnivorous fungus. It survived by trapping tiny worms on its sticky appendages.

Alexander Schmidt of the Natural Science Museum at Humboldt University, in Berlin, is interested in amber. Not as jewelry, but for its role in being a messenger from the past. And now a lump of amber from a quarry in southwestern France has just delivered an interesting message, indeed: a fossilized fungus that may have eaten worms.

Schmidt was researching the large chunk of amber brought back to him by Vincent Perrichot, a French Humboldt University fellow. Stemming from the Cretaceous period, the amber was found near a coastal forest and dates back 100 million years. Instead of amber's normal golden hue, however, this piece was chock-filled with air bubbles and bits of debris, indicating that it was formed when tree resin fell to the ground and solidified in soil. The resulting amber chunk was big enough to cut into 30 slices for detailed paleontological research.

The findings were extraordinary. Perrichot and Schmidt found some 70 different insects, as well as a variety of microorganisms packed into the amber. Among these were tiny fungi with adhesive rings the scientists say were used to capture prey. When a tiny worm -- called a nematode -- wandered into the fungus's sticky appendages -- each only 12 micrometers in diameter -- it had no chance of survival. Fungal cells of infestation hyphae would grow around the worm, slowly decomposing its body, supplementing the fungus's more diverse diet. In the Schmidt amber, fossilized nematodes were found preserved near the fungi, suggesting that they were the mushroom's lunch.

Worm Hunters

Flesh-eating fungi are known to researches, to be sure -- at least 200 of them, actually -- but none as old as this one. Schmidt says this newly discovered fungus is entirely different than those scientists already know of. "We are sure that it's a fungus with no living relatives," Schmidt told SPIEGEL ONLINE on Thursday. The fossils also showed record of miniature buds called blastospheres -- known to be capturing organs -- which are not found in any modern species. "The finding of this yet-unnamed fungus was both surprising and exciting," Schmidt said.

Environmental biologist George L. Barron of the University of Guelph, in Canada, however, is not entirely convinced. "The presence of nematodes could be coincidental and have nothing to do with predation," he told the National Geographic Web site. "Nematodes are commonly found mixed up within organic debris with nonpredatory fungal hyphae."

Still, the finding is bound to thrill readers of the journal Science, where Schimdt's findings were published. For the Humboldt University researchers the discovery indicates that carnivorous fungi had already developed trapping mechanisms in the Cretaceous period, which began 145 million years ago, and that they coexisted with dinosaurs.

But for University of Guelph's Barron, it would take finding a capturing device wrapped around a nematode to suggest actual predation. And "someday, someone might find the definitive proof in amber, showing a nematode captured in a ring, or a nematode by itself with a ring circling its body," he told National Geographic. If so, it would provide evidence of a "giant step on the evolutionary scale." Bon appetit.

rjm