Fungus unchanged for 400 million years, as reported in Botany One 29 June 2020, and Annals of Botany 24 June 2020, doi: 10.1093/aob/mcaa113.
Scientists have studied thin sections of the fossil bearing Lower Devonian Rhynie chert in Scotland, which is dated as 410 million years old. They found exquisitely preserved reproductive structures, known as spore-saccule complexes, of a type of a mycorrhizal fungus. They compared the fossil spore-saccule complexes with those of a living genus of mycorrhizal fungi named Archaeospora, belonging to the phylum Glomeromycota.
The researchers wrote: “This fossil is so morphologically similar to some extant Glomeromycota that, were it not for the need for molecular evidence in modern day taxonomy, it may well be placed in a modern genus, and thus suggests that the genus Archaeospora perpetuated for considerably more than 400 million years.”
They also commented: “There is considerable interest in the mycorrhizal component of modern ecosystems and the roles these symbioses play in ecosystem functioning, while we are only beginning to assess such interactions in the fossil record.”
Link: Botany One
Editorial Comment: How about that? These scientists have actually admitted their fossil fungus is exactly the same as the living fungi Archaeospora, so in other words Archaeospora have reproduced their own kind, no matter how old anyone thinks the Rhynie chert is.
As the researchers noted, mycorrhizal fungi live in mutually beneficial symbiotic relationships with plants. Finding them in the fossil record is a reminder that God not only created fully formed individual life forms, but created whole functioning ecosystems. The more we study the living world, the more we see that nothing works in isolation, and finding mycorrhizal fungi as fossils is a reminder that symbiosis is, and always has been the norm for the living world.
Altogether, this find is a clear evidence God created fully formed living organisms working together in fully functioning ecosystems, and reproducing after their kind. Biologists and palaeontologists are without excuse if they reject the Genesis account of creation.
Evidence News
5 August 2020
Creation Research Australia
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