Yunnan’s 50 cm ‘D-rex’ fungus belongs to a family dating back 65 million years
Researchers in Yunnan, China, have identified Dianjunus rex, a fungus with fruiting bodies up to 50 cm tall and 2.2 kg in weight—the largest documented in the fungal group Ascomycota. The study, published in Frontiers in Fungal Biology, classifies it as a new species, genus and family, Dianjunaceae, whose origins genome analysis estimates at about 65 million years ago.
Bottom line — Dianjunaceae’s estimated 65-million-year lineage places its emergence soon after the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.
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The researchers found the fungus in Yunnan forests, growing from roots of Chinese cork oak and other host plants.
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The study estimates the family arose about one million years after the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction.
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Co-author Indunil C. Senanayake said the timing may reflect new opportunities for wood-decomposing fungi amid post-extinction forest changes.
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Senanayake hypothesised that the fungus’s height could help wind disperse its spores above forest debris, though building such a large structure takes substantial energy.
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The researchers sequenced the fungus’s DNA and compared its traits with related fungi to establish its distinct lineage.