Lichen-Like Symbiosis 600 Million Years Ago

X. Yuan; S. Xiao; T. Taylor

DOI:10.1126/SCIENCE.1111347

Corpus ID: 27083645

Lichen-Like Symbiosis 600 Million Years Ago

@article{Yuan2005LichenLikeS6,
  title={Lichen-Like Symbiosis 600 Million Years Ago},
  author={X. Yuan and S. Xiao and T. Taylor},
  journal={Science},
  year={2005},
  volume={308},
  pages={1017 - 1020}
}

X. Yuan, S. Xiao, T. Taylor

Published 2005

Biology, Medicine

Science

The fossil record of fungi and lichens is scarce. Here we report the discovery of lichen-like fossils, involving filamentous hyphae closely associated with coccoidal cyanobacteria or algae, preserved in marine phosphorite of the Doushantuo Formation (between 551 and 635 million years old) at Weng'an, South China. These fossils indicate that fungi developed symbiotic partnerships with photoautotrophs before the evolution of vascular plants.

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