{"id":219872,"date":"2025-06-27T23:45:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T23:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/219872\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T23:45:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T23:45:12","slug":"zombie-fungus-caught-bursting-from-host-bodies-99-million-years-ago-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/219872\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Zombie’ Fungus Caught Bursting From Host Bodies 99 Million Years Ago : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have caught ancient parasitic fungi in the act of bursting from insect hosts, in dramatic scenes frozen in amber<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dating back almost 100 million years, these two specimens are among the oldest evidence of ‘zombie’ fungus, second only to one early-Cretaceous species discovered back in 2008<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Amber forms over millions of years from the sticky resin of trees, and is renowned for the many bizarre<\/a>, unique<\/a>, and enlightening<\/a> moments it has preserved.<\/p>\n

These two pieces, now in the hands of the London Natural History Museum, include the new fungus species Paleoophiocordyceps gerontoformicae, with its tiny spore stalks sprouting from the body of a pupating ant, and P. ironomyiae, in the form of a singular, phallic fruiting body protruding from a fly’s head.<\/p>\n

Related: Hotter Climate Could Fuel Spread of Dangerous Fungi, Scientists Warn<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"twoP. gerontoformicae growing on an ant pupa, trapped in amber. (Zhuang et al., Proc. R. Soc. B, 2025)<\/p>\n

These newfound species appear to share traits with living relatives, Ophiocordyceps<\/a>, that continue to infect insects<\/a> as a means of spreading their spores.<\/p>\n

Scientists think the Paleoophiocordyceps species may have separated from Ophiocordyceps around 130 million years ago.<\/p>\n

\"photoP. ironomyiae and its fly host in amber. (Zhuang et al., Proc. R. Soc. B, 2025)<\/p>\n

“The fossil evidence shows that the infectious fungi were already adapted to two different insect hosts a hundred million years ago, an ant and a true fly,” says<\/a> paleoentomologist Edmund Jarzembowski from the Natural History Museum. <\/p>\n

“This suggests that the fungus made this jump to other insects as they diversified with the rise of flowering plants and new insect groups, especially moths and butterflies<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

The research is published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have caught ancient parasitic fungi in the act of bursting from insect hosts, in dramatic scenes frozen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[120,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-219872","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-msft-content","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114757994615220796","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}