Ancient fungi ruled Earth’s landscapes billions of years before plants, secretly shaping the first ecosystems |
Source: Smithsonian Magazine For centuries, plants were seen as the first colonisers of land, but new research reveals that fungi ruled terrestrial ecosystems long before plants took root. Emerging hundreds of millions of years earlier, fungi played a crucial role in shaping early environments, forming partnerships with algae and recycling nutrients to build proto-soils. Their…
