From being the main antagonist of a major video game and now television franchise, zombie fungus like cordyceps have quickly become a popular point of scientific intrigue. However, these interesting mushrooms and fungi have lived far longer than you might expect. In fact, a newly discovered piece of amber shows that the “zombie fungi” actually lived over 100 million years ago.
Beyond being a plot device in “The Last of Us,” cordyceps has also proven to be a possible tool in the fight to cure cancer. Beyond that, though, discovering a new strain of almost 100 million-year-old zombie fungus preserved in amber is exciting for a number of reasons. The newly described fungi, Paleoophiocordyceps gerontoformicae and Paleoophiocordyceps ironomyiae, look to have operated very similar to their modern entomopathogenic relatives.
Much like the zombie fungi that can be found today, these new fungi sprout stems from their dead hosts, allowing them to infect other animals and insects as they come close to it. The newly discovered hunk of amber shows an ant pupa, which died and then sprouted a slender fungal stem. The amber also contains a fly, which has been pierced by a second type of fungus: a projectile-like stroma.
This discovery is exciting because it shows that even 100 million years ago, zombie fungi like this were found throughout the world. Based on the count of the stalks, as well as the arrangement found within the fungus, it appears they can be tied to the modern Ophiocordyceps family, despite the fact that the lineage for the genus split more than 130 million years ago.
Of course, we all know that amber is a bit of a time capsule for ancient days. It even starred as a primary source of DNA for researchers in the fictional “Jurassic Park,” which has spurred on a franchise of multiple movies, video games, and even television shows. Of course, the chances of actually pulling working DNA from amber is very slim, but it’s still cool to be able to look back in time and see a 100 million-year-old zombie fungus frozen in time.
