Unreal Amber Fossils Show ‘Last of Us’ Zombie Fungus Terrorizing Bugs During the Cretaceous

In video games The last of us And its HBO Spin-Off series, humans are fighting to survive Cordyceps, a parasitic fungus that transforms its hosts into zombies. While infections are extremely dramatized in the game and the show, These mushrooms are not science fiction. In fact, some species have existed since the age of dinosaurs, suggests a new study.

An international team of researchers led by Yuhui Zhuang, a doctoral student in paleontology from the Chinese University of Yunnan, recently found two infected infected infected in Amber of 99 million years. Fossilized flies and ants of ants are among the oldest fossil records of animal pathogenic mushrooms, dating from Cretaceous. In addition, these insects were infected with two species of fungi previously unknown to science, now named Paleoophiocordyce gerontoformicae And Paleoophiocordyce ironomyiae. The researchers published their results in the journal Acts of the Royal Society B June 11.

“Overall, these two fossils are very rare, at least among the tens of thousands of amber specimens that we have seen, and only a few preserved the symbiotic relationship between mushrooms and insects”, Zhuang said CNN.

Amber came from northern Myanmar, which has suffer Conflict violates since 2017 due to a boom in fossil amber research. The study notes that the specimens used by the authors were purchased before 2017 and were, to their knowledge, involved in a conflict.

Zhuang and his colleagues used optical microscopes to examine fossilized insects, then built 3D images using a X-ray imaging technique called micro-line tomography. This revealed surprising aspects of infections of insects.

The researchers have determined that the two newly discovered fungal species belong to the genre Ophiocordycewhich also includes a species commonly called zombie-year mushroom. The name comes from its ability to control the behavior of its host. In the last stage of the infection, the fungus takes control of the insect brain and makes it look for a higher location with more sun and heat – optimal conditions for the production of spores. Once the insect has been deceased, fungal growth eruption From his head and begins to release spores that will infect new victims.

The fossilized fly has been preserved in this state, with the fruit body of P. Ironomyiae burst with his head. Unlike a typical late stage Ophiocordyce infection, which generally produces a fruit body with a smooth and swollen point, P. IronomyiaeThe fruit body was unexpected and textured. Fourmi Papa, infected with P. Géontolicaewas even more unusual. Instead of getting out of the head of the Pupa, the fungus broke out of the metapleural gland, which produces antimicrobial secretions. This has never been observed among any known species of OphiocordyceNote researchers. These differences reported that they probably looked at two species never seen before.

When they compared the growth structures and models of these mushrooms to Ophiocordyce Species, the researchers found clear features binding them to this genus but could not match them with any documented species. They used modern DNA Ophiocordyce Species to build phylogeny – a visual representation of the evolutionary history of the genus – then estimated where the newly discovered species have diverged from their loved ones.

Analysis has led to a deeper understanding of Ophiocordyce“History, suggesting that it was born at the beginning of the Cretaceous and began to infect the beetles. He then evolved to infect butterflies, night butterflies and other insects, including bees and ants – at the end of the Center -Cretais. The booming diversity and the abundance of insect host species have probably led the rapid emergence of new species of ophiocordycepts during the Cretaceous, conclude the researchers.

Assembly the evolutionary history of parasitic mushrooms has proven difficult due to a lack of old specimens, according to London Natural History MuseumOne of the institutions that contributed to research. “It is fascinating to see part of the strangeness of the natural world that we see today was also present at the height of the age of dinosaurs,” said co-author Edmund Jarzembowski, an associate scientist of the museum, in a statement. The discovery offers a rare overview of the rise of these very adaptable fungal pathogens.