18 March 2017 (02:27 UTC-07 Tango 06) 28 Esfand 1395/19 Jumada t-Tania 1438/21 Gui Mao 4715
Could early humans have been whacked on shrooms from the beginning? Scientists from China, New Zealand and United States claim to have the oldest intact mushroom fossils ever; 99-million years old!
Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology (of the Chinese Academy of Sciences) released images of four mushrooms found in Malaysian (Burmese) amber. But wait, there’s more. The scientists also found parts of beetles, which survive by eating mushrooms, in amber that’s 125-million years old!
They spent ten years collecting the amber. However, 99-million years isn’t the oldest, in 2007 researchers in United States claimed to have found a 100-million years old mushroom, also in Malaysian amber. What’s also interesting is that mushroom fossils in amber have been turning up around the world, with most of them dating to about the same time period, meaning mushrooms were everywhere man!
Shroom art by Aryssa May Hutchins
2016: 50 million year old mushroom found trapped in amber