Get the latest tech news
A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly
Paleontologists studying insects trapped in amber from 99 million years ago have made a remarkable discovery: an ant and a fly with parasitic fungi bursting from their bodies.
The insect, along with a second specimen of a young ant infected with a similar fungus, are two of the oldest examples of a bizarre natural phenomenon that involves fungal parasites hijacking the bodies of their hosts before ultimately killing them. The species of fungus that infected the prehistoric ant may be an ancestor of zombie-ant fungi, and thus likely controlled its host’s body in similar ways, said study coauthor João Araújo, mycology curator and assistant professor at the Danish Natural History Museum. This lost parasite diversity had a significant role in shaping the planet we live on today, said Phil Barden, an associate professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology’s department of biological sciences, who has worked on amber fossils.
Or read this on Hacker News
