Dinosaurs weren't the only carnivores to be feared during the Cretaceous. A predatory fungus that captured and devoured tiny roundworms is described in the October American Journal of Botany. The fungus, dubbed Palaeoanellus dimorphus, was found with its prey in a 100-million-year-old piece of amber from southwestern France. The new species bumps the age of nematode-eating fungi back by about 80 million years. Like many of today’s predatory fungi, P. dimorphus has a threadlike growth habit with ring-shaped traps, shown in the inset photo. But the ancient fungus boasts a yeast-like budding stage (top left, larger photo) that is absent in modern predatory species, which number about 200. This yeast-like budding stage is typically associated with wet habitats, whereas the threading lifestyle is associated with drier digs. This duality suggests that the ancient fungus represents an early transition from wet to drier habitats.— Rachel Ehrenberg

Citation: Alexander R. Schmidt, Heinrich Dörfelt, and Vincent Perrichot. 2008. Palaeoanellus dimorphus gen. et sp. nov. (Deuteromycotina): a Cretaceous predatory fungusAmerican Journal of Botany. 95(10): 1328–1334.

Credit: Schmidt, A. R. et al. 2008. Am J Bot.

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