Evolution of fungi

[5] However, a 2.4-billion-year-old basalt from the Palaeoproterozoic Ongeluk Formation in South Africa containing filamentous fossils in vescicles and fractures, that form mycelium-like structures may push back the origin of the Kingdom over one billion years before.

The researchers who reported on these fossils suggested that these fungus-like organisms may have played a role in oxygenating Earth's atmosphere in the aftermath of the Cryogenian glaciations.

[3] About 250 million years ago fungi became abundant in many areas, based on the fossil record, and could even have been the dominant form of life on the earth at that time.

[12] The earliest fossils possessing features typical of fungi date to the Paleoproterozoic era, some 2,400 million years ago (Ma); these multicellular benthic organisms had filamentous structures capable of anastomosis, in which hyphal branches recombine.

[15] The evolutionary adaptation from an aquatic to a terrestrial lifestyle necessitated a diversification of ecological strategies for obtaining nutrients, including parasitism, saprobism, and the development of mutualistic relationships such as mycorrhiza and lichenization.

[2] Fossilized hyphae and spores recovered from the Ordovician of Wisconsin (460 Ma) resemble modern-day Glomerales, and existed at a time when the land flora likely consisted of only non-vascular bryophyte-like plants;[21] but these have been dismissed as contamination.

Two amber-preserved specimens provide evidence that the earliest known mushroom-forming fungi (the extinct species Archaeomarasmius legletti) appeared during the mid-Cretaceous, 90 Ma.

Fungi appear to have had the chance to flourish due to the extinction of most plant and animal species, and the resultant fungal bloom has been described as like "a massive compost heap".