Can Fungus Be Fossilized?

[Cole]

Ok guys please bear with me, I am new here.

I first have to say this is a great forum. I ran a forum for over a year on a specific species of Central American Cichlid, and surely I wish it was this well put together. Many kudo's for your hard work here.

Where shall I begin...

A friend of mine claimed he had this petrified mushroom. He said he was walking through the farm fields after a fresh till looking for arrow heads that he commonly finds. He claims he kicked this rock and noticed something strange about it so he brought it home and washed it off. He said it was plain as day what he had...a fossilized or petrified mushroom. I'm no expert in the field Paleobotany or anything to do with fossils, but it just seemed odd to me that such a thing could be turned to stone like this.

 

I had a hard time believing him and finally tonight he brought it over. Sure enough, clear as can be it is indeed rock hard mushroom. The top of the cap is completely smooth and the bottom of the cap has a hole where the stem should be as well as lines where the gils of the mushrooms are. There is also a stem that he says was in the hole in the ground that the cap came flying out of.

 

I took some pictures with my cell phone and they are horrible. I am going to post them anyway just to give a slight glimpse at what we are dealing with here. For people like us its a pretty exciting find, but it leaves a couple of questions:

 

How can something so soft stay in such perfect condition through such an extremely long proccess of fossilization?

One would suspect a fungus would decompose before this could happen.

Are fossils of mushrooms common?

How can we determine the age?

 

The other thing that sort of puzzled us was the location this thing was found. It was not found in rock. Delaware has practically no rock...we are mostly sand here. So does southern Delaware seem like an unlikely place to have found such a thing?

I know these pictures wont do it much justice or give you much to go on for identification purposes, but I atleast wanted to show something so you knew this story is not a fabrication.

Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to give.

Cole~

 

     

[jpbowden]

Yes fungus can be fossilized, but I do not know if that's what you have are not. It has been found on fossil woods before, as to yours anything can be possible.

[Metopocetus]

Giant Fossil Fungus

<click on above for article>

[tracer]

welcome and thanks for posting your question. i imagine when some of the more knowledgeable people wake up, you might get better answers than i can provide, but anyway...

you can google "geological map of delaware" and find links to maps that will show you the strata. apparently southern delaware is almost all miocene/pliocene layers of silt and sand, which is to be expected given it's location. fossils are found in the cretaceous of northern delaware, but that isn't where you said it was found. i really don't think it's a fungus. if i had to guess, i'd guess it was either a concretion, a burrow, or maybe some type of solitary coral. well-focused close-up pictures would aid greatly in trying to assess the thing.

nature plays many tricks on those of us who look for interesting stuff, and it sometimes takes a lot of head scratching and analysis to figure it out. and sometimes we can't figure it out.

thanks for posting the item. we'll see what others say...

[Eriphia]

rather seems to be an sponge, I'd say

[Auspex]

It may be a fossil, but a petrified mushroom would be the least likely ID.

If it's possible to get better pics, someone here can probably nail it down

[jkfoam]

Cole,

Well I can see why your friend thinks it is a petrified mushroom, it certainly looks like one. That said I have to add that fossil mushrooms are extremely rare. The fossilization of any soft tissue organism is rare and often involves complex circumstances (Um, that might be said for any fossil). For example I can envision a volcanic ash fall or a flood carrying mud or sediments covering a forest floor and preserving some mushrooms, leaves, insects, etc. Think Florrisant, Colorado, fossil beds. I have seen fossil insects, bird feathers, seeds, leaves, butterflies, flowers but never a mushroom.

Generally the age of a fossil is determined from the geologic strata in which it was found. A fossil not found in-situ can be very difficult or impossible to date.

Also, I have seen a lot of rocks that bear a strong resemblance to a life organism but are in final analysis just rocks that nature sculpted in a parculiar way.

JKFoam

[Dave Daniel AKA (Bones)]

Yummy! I love mushrooms. I live right here in Florissant. I will check with the fossil beds museum Monday to see if they have any type of specimen.

[Guest solius symbiosus]

I have to agree with the others. It is almost certainly not a mushroom. Better pics, and locality data are needed for a determination.

[Guest Nicholas]

It resembles invertebrate material to me. possibly a coral.

[Cole]

Thanks for the replies.

I have a much better camera, so I will see what can be done about getting better pictures for you. It may take a couple weeks to get back together with him again though.

I felt from the begining just hearing the claims of a petrified mushroom, that it most likely could not be. I actually use to work on an organic mushroom farm, so I have some experience with them. From my experience it seems once a mushroom has sprouted, it only lasts a matter of 3 - 5 days...before it completely decomposes or is eaten. So in my mind I cant see how a "soft tissue organism" could be turned to stone unless as another said, a major occurence happened to cause this. I don't even think being covered in ash or a bed of mud could do it...just too much there like heat and bacteria to help with the decomposition. I would say not much could petrify a fungus beyond a freezing blast of cold air that lasted centuries...but thats a lot of speculation.

But then again Delaware does have quite a strange history. From school we learned Delaware was mostly formed during the glacial melt after the thawing of the last ice age. Sediment basically droped off the thawing glaciers and formed the peninsula here. So we have a lot of sand, but we also have a lot of things that were deposited here that arent from around here. For example one year my father was doing some excavation work for a construction company when they uncovered dinosaur bones and an entire forest of petrified wood. Not really sure if they found that those dinoasaurs were here after the glacial melt or just part of the deposited sediment.

Anyway just some quick research gives me this:

The most common fossils found in Delaware are from the Cretaceous period, and range from 65 to 100 million years in age. Some fossil collecting localities have also been found in central and southern Delaware, with the fossils generally being younger further south in the state. Fossils found in Kent County are commonly 12 to 20 million years old, and those in Sussex County mostly date from less than less than 1 million years.

That information came from the Delaware Geological Survey. I think my best bet would be to get the specimen over to them for a quick identification. I am sure they must have seen something like this before...and my guess would be it is likely not a fungus and more likely to be some type of coral.

I appreciate the advice and information, and I will get more pictures and my findings to everyone as soon as I have them.

Thanks again,

Cole~