Schmidt Alexander R, Dörfelt Heinrich, Perrichot Vincent
Museum für Naturkunde der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Invalidenstrasse 43, 10115 Berlin, Germany.
Science. 2007 Dec 14;318(5857):1743. doi: 10.1126/science.1149947.
Carnivorous fungi dating back to the age of the dinosaurs have been found fossilized in circa-100-million-year-old amber. The fossil fungi used hyphal rings as trapping devices and are preserved together with their prey, small nematodes. The excellent preservation in amber allowed comparison with extant groups: On the basis of the mode of ring formation and the dimorphic mode of life, the fossils cannot be assigned to any recent carnivorous fungus, providing evidence that different groups occupied this ecological niche in the Cretaceous and that trapping devices were developed independently multiple times in the course of Earth history.
人们发现，可追溯到恐龙时代的食肉真菌在距今约1亿年的琥珀中形成了化石。这些化石真菌利用菌丝环作为捕捉装置，并与其猎物——小型线虫一同被保存下来。琥珀中的极佳保存状态使得它们能够与现存类群进行比较：基于环的形成方式和双态生活模式，这些化石无法被归类到任何现存的食肉真菌中，这表明在白垩纪时期不同的类群占据了这一生态位，并且在地球历史进程中捕捉装置曾多次独立进化。
