Greening of the Earth pushed way back in time
New work by Gregory Retallack about terrestrial fossils greater than 2 million years old. The identity of the organisms is unknown, but are compared to Geosiphon. Geosiphon is fascinating in that it is a non-lichen fungal-cyanobacterial symbiosis. The cyanobacteria are Nostoc, and they live ndosymbiotically -- inside the fungal cells. The fungi are interesting as well since they are not ascomycetes like almost all lichens (there are a few basidomycete lichens too). Rather they are a lineage of fungi close to the glomeromycota which form arbuscular mycorrhizas.
See my older post about a different controversial paper by Retallack.
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