Fungi thrived during mass extinction
Fossil analyses hint that several species made the most of Earth’s largest mass die-off
By Sid Perkins
Microfossils that show up in large quantities in ancient rocks deposited during Earth’s largest mass extinction are fungal spores, not algae as some recent studies had proposed, new research suggests.
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About 251 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, life on Earth had its closest call: In a geologically short period of time, a mass extinction claimed more than 95 percent of species in the oceans and 70 percent of those on land (SN: 2/1/97, p. 74). But a few species bucked the extinction trend and proliferated at the time — in particular, those in the genus Reduviasporonites, says Mark A. Sephton, a geochemist at Imperial College London. In some cases, 100 percent of the organic matter found in rocks from the end of the Permian comes from Reduviasporonites.
Although researchers originally proposed that the Reduviasporonites spores came from fungi that feasted on the sudden bounty of dead woody plants, some recent studies have suggested that those fossils are the remnants of massive algal blooms, Sephton says. Now, he and his colleagues say in the October Geology, new analyses discount the algal explanation.