ye olde feeding frenzy
An Oregon scientist and a Kentucky nurse have found the oldest known mushroom, entombed in a 100-million-year-old piece of amber from Burma.
A closer examination of the nine-hundredths-inch-long mushroom cap revealed that it had been infected by an ancient parasite, which a second parasite was feeding on.
Scientists have long assumed that fungi exist mainly to decompose matter into chemicals that other organisms can then use. But researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found evidence that fungi possess a previously undiscovered talent with profound implications: the ability to use radioactivity as an energy source for making food and spurring their growth.
“The fungal kingdom comprises more species than any other plant or animal kingdom, so finding that they’re making food in addition to breaking it down means that Earth’s energetics—in particular, the amount of radiation energy being converted to biological energy—may need to be recalculated…”
