Conspicuous fungus chlamydospores in
the Rhynie chert
Fungus
formations called chlamydospores are well known and not rare in the
Rhynie chert but some are peculiar and worth being considered more
closely, as, for example, the big one in Rhynie
Chert News 19
or 84,
or the small ones in
Rhynie
Chert News 115.
They are nearly always
spherical, hence two ellipsoids seen
near each other inside a hollow plant is a very
rare view. Nothing similar has been seen among thousands
of plant sections.
Fig.1:
Fungus chlamydospores of uncommon ellipsoidal shape within the hollow
shoot of an early land plant, most probably Aglaophyton,
in the Rhynie chert. Image width 2mm.
Obviously,
fungus hyphae are much less persistent than chlamydospores so that
often only the latter are seen as fossils while nothing is left of the
hyphae. In addition to its big size, this "egg" is conspicuous
for the
silica spherulites inside. There are no spherulites elsewhere, hence
silicification conditions must have been distinctly different within
and without. This indicates the presence of a barrier at the surface
which kept the debris
from the decayed plant tissue out but let the silica in.
In view of the fact that there are several fungus
species in the Rhynie chert,
a statement from [1] is
apparently still valid:
The several different resting spores corresponding to the several
fungus species "cannot yet be assigned to a particular clade with
certainty, as important parts of their life cycles have not yet been
discovered".
Sample: Rh6/68
(0.76kg) Part 2, found in 2003.
H.-J.
Weiss 2022 (Easter)
[1]
T.N. Taylor,
E.L. Taylor, M. Krings: Paleobotany, Elsevier 2009, 76.
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