Mushrooms are older than we thought ! “Science Advances”

New publication in Science Advances

A new study led by Steeve Bonneville from the Université libre de Bruxelles, shows that the first mushrooms were already present on Earth between 715 and 810 million years ago, 300 million years earlier than the scientific community had believed until now. The results, published in Science Advances, also suggest that mushrooms could have been important partners for the first plants that colonized the continental surface.

Link to the article: Molecular identification of fungi microfossils in a Neoproterozoic shale rock (2020) Bonneville S., F. Delpomdor, A. Préat, C. Chevalier, T. Araki, M. Kazemian, A. Steele, A. Schreiber, R. Wirth and L. G. Benning, Science Advances, Vol. 6, no. 4, doi:10.1126/sciadv.aax7599.

Link to the official press release

Link to National Geographic article

Link to RTBF TV-reportage