Abstract
A new fossil mushroom is described and illustrated from the Lower Cretaceous Crato Formation of northeast Brazil. Gondwanagaricites magnificus gen. et sp. nov. is remarkable for its exceptional preservation as a mineralized replacement in laminated limestone, as all other fossil mushrooms are known from amber inclusions. Gondwanagaricites represents the oldest fossil mushroom to date and the first fossil mushroom from Gondwana.
Highlights
Preserved fossils can shed important and unprecedented light on the history of life
The specimen comes from the laminated limestones of the Crato Formation, which outcrop on the northern flanks of the Chapada do Araripe in Ceara, Brazil; a Lagerstatte famous for the exceptional preservation of its diverse Lower Cretaceous paleobiota [9,10,11]
Geographically widespread, speciose organisms that account for the second largest group of eukaryotes [12]. Despite their global distribution and evolutionary history extending some 1,430 Ma [13], the fossil record for fungal structures other than spores is exceedingly scant with reports of mostly sexual [14,15,16,17,18] and asexual stages [19,20,21,22,23] of ascomycetes from mid-Cretaceous to Miocene ambers
Summary
Preserved fossils can shed important and unprecedented light on the history of life. Large and important groups of soft-bodied organisms would be missing entirely from the fossil record if not for their exceptional preservation in Lagerstatten. An ecologically important group of fungi in the order Agaricales, produce fleshy, gilled fruiting bodies (called basidiomes) that are rarely fossilized [1]. While certainly ancient, they have an extremely depauperate fossil record with only ten fossil mushrooms reported to date, all unique amber inclusions ranging from mid-Cretaceous to Early Miocene in age [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. The specimen comes from the laminated limestones of the Crato Formation, which outcrop on the northern flanks of the Chapada do Araripe in Ceara, Brazil; a Lagerstatte famous for the exceptional preservation of its diverse Lower Cretaceous paleobiota [9,10,11]
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