Image of the fungus-like filamentous microfossils. (Andrew Czaja)NATURE

CARLY CASSELLA31 JANUARY 2021

https://www.sciencealert.com/this-635-million-year-old-microfossil-may-have-got-us-out-of-the-last-ice-age

An international team of scientists in South China accidentally discovered the oldest terrestrial fossil ever found, about three times more ancient than the oldest knowndinosaur.

Investigations are still ongoing and observations will need to be independently verified, but the international team argues the long thread-like fingers of this ancient organism look a lot like fungi.

Whatever it is, the eukaryote appears to have fossilised on land roughly 635 million years ago, just as Earth was recovering from a global ice age.

During this massive glaciation event, our planet resembleda big snowball,its oceans sealed from the Sun by more than a kilometre (0.6 miles) of solid ice. And then, in a geologic ‘flash’, our world began toinexplicably thaw, allowing life to thrive on land for the first time.

Fungi might…