Fossil fungi with suggested affinities to the Endogonaceae from the Middle Triassic of Antarctica.

Documented fossil evidence of zygomycetous fungi is rare. A conspicuous fungal fossil, Jimwhitea circumtecta gen. et sp.

The fossil record of the Peronosporomycetes (Oomycota).

Evidence of fossil Peronosporomycetes has been slow to accumulate. In this review various fossils historically assigmed to the Peronosporomycets are dicussed briefly and an explanation is provided as to why the fossil record of this grouop has remained inconsistent. In recent year there has been several new reports of fossil peronosporomycetes based on structurally preserved oogonium-antheridium complexes from Derovonian and Carboniferous rocks that demonstrate the existence of these organisms as fossils and refute the long-standing assumption that they are too delicate to be preserved.

A fossil peronosporomycete oogonium with an unusual surface ornament from the Carboniferous of France.

A new fossil peronosporomycete from the upper Visean (Mississippian) of France occurs as a globose oogonium at the tip of a thin-walled hypha. The oogonium surface is prominently ornamented by densely spaced, long and subtle, straight or once to several times furcated thread-like extensions; many possess an opaque, bulb-like swelling at base. Antheridia adpressed to the oogonium are clavate and paragynous.

Combresomyces cornifer gen. sp. nov., an endophytic peronosporomycete in Lepidodendron from the Carboniferous of central France.

Structurally preserved periderm of the lycophyte Lepidodendron rhodumnense from the Visean (Mississippian) of central France contains a peronosporomycete (Combresomyces cornifer gen. sp. nov.

Fungal endophytes in a 400-million-yr-old land plant: infection pathways, spatial distribution, and host responses.

The Early Devonian Rhynie chert has been critical in documenting early land plant-fungal interactions. However, complex associations involving several fungi that enter into qualitatively different relationships with a single host plant and even interact with one another have not yet been detailed. Here, we studied petrographic thin sections of the Rhynie chert plant Nothia aphylla.

An alternative mode of early land plant colonization by putative endomycorrhizal fungi.

Rhizomatous axes of Nothia aphylla, a land plant from the 400-myr-old Rhynie chert, host a fungus that closely resembles Glomites rhyniensis (Glomeromycota), the endomycorrhizal fungus of the Rhynie chert plant Aglaophyton major. However, G. rhyniensis is an intercellular endophyte that becomes intracellular exclusively within a well-defined region of the cortex, while the fungus in N.