Traces of ancient mushrooms found in Europe's largest meteorite crater

Almost 400 million years ago, Sweden's picturesque Lake Siljan formed an impressive impact structure

A team of researchers found fossil remains of fungi in newly excavated cores from boreholes deep in the crater.

Scientists have studied an area of ​​the rock with intensecracks at a depth of 540 m in the crater and marked fine threadlike structures in the caverns. Upon closer examination in the laboratory, it became clear to them that the threads were fossilized remains of mushrooms. It turned out that they are resistant to an oxygen-free environment at these depths.

The relative abundance of various isotopescarbon and sulfur in minerals, suggested to researchers that fungi are involved in the formation of methane and sulfides in interactions with other inhabitants of the deep biosphere - bacteria and archaea.

Henrik Drake of Linnaeus University, Sweden, andThe study's lead author explains the discovery: “The results show that fungi can be widespread destroyers of organic matter and ignore symbiotic partners for other, more primitive microorganisms, thereby able to improve the production of greenhouse gases in the huge deep biosphere that contains rocks.

Radioisotope dating of tiny crystalscalcite, formed as a result of microbial formation of methane, showed the age of the fossils of the fungi about 39 million years ago, that is, more than 300 million years after the fall of the meteorite.

Impact structure with an annular fault zonePaleozoic sediments were optimal for deep colonization of fungi, since energy sources in the form of organic matter and hydrocarbons from the overlying shale migrated along the fractured crater.

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Caverns are a geological term for voidsin a rock of irregular or round shape with a size of more than 1 mm. Formed as a result of natural processes, such as leaching, selective weathering, dissolution or solidification of lava. There are caverns filled with gas compounds.