ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Delayed fungal evolution did not cause the Paleozoic peak in coal production.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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23 citing papers in PubMed, 139 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Review on mushroom mycelium-based products and their production process: from upstream to downstream.Bioresources and bioprocessing · 2025Review
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- The elements of life: A biocentric tour of the periodic table.Advances in microbial physiology · 2023Article
- Ancestral sequence reconstruction as a tool to study the evolution of wood decaying fungi.Frontiers in fungal biology · 2022Review
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- Glucose counteracts wood-dependent induction of lignocellulolytic enzyme secretion in monokaryon and dikaryon submerged cultures of the white-rot basidiomycete Pleurotus ostreatus.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- In silico definition of new ligninolytic peroxidase sub-classes in fungi and putative relation to fungal life style.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- The efficiency paradox: How wasteful competitors forge thrifty ecosystems.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Carbon assimilation profiles of mucoralean fungi show their metabolic versatility.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Fungal evolution: major ecological adaptations and evolutionary transitions.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2019Review
- Evolutionary convergence in lignin-degrading enzymes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Genomics and biochemistry investigation on the metabolic pathway of milled wood and alkali lignin-derived aromatic metabolites ofBiotechnology for biofuels · 2018Article
- Trophic and tectonic limits to the global increase of marine invertebrate diversity.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Lignin degradation: microorganisms, enzymes involved, genomes analysis and evolution.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2017Review
- Formation of most of our coal brought Earth close to global glaciation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
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4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Organic carbon burial plays a critical role in Earth systems, influencing atmospheric O2 and CO2 concentrations and, thereby, climate. The Carboniferous Period of the Paleozoic is so named for massive, widespread coal deposits. A widely accepted explanation for this peak in coal production is a temporal lag between the evolution of abundant lignin production in woody plants and the subsequent evolution of lignin-degrading Agaricomycetes fungi, resulting in a period when vast amounts of lignin-rich plant material accumulated. Here, we reject this evolutionary lag hypothesis, based on assessment of phylogenomic, geochemical, paleontological, and stratigraphic evidence. Lignin-degrading Agaricomycetes may have been present before the Carboniferous, and lignin degradation was likely never restricted to them and their class II peroxidases, because lignin modification is known to occur via other enzymatic mechanisms in other fungal and bacterial lineages. Furthermore, a large proportion of Carboniferous coal horizons are dominated by unlignified lycopsid periderm with equivalent coal accumulation rates continuing through several transitions between floral dominance by lignin-poor lycopsids and lignin-rich tree ferns and seed plants. Thus, biochemical composition had little relevance to coal accumulation. Throughout the fossil record, evidence of decay is pervasive in all organic matter exposed subaerially during deposition, and high coal accumulation rates have continued to the present wherever environmental conditions permit. Rather than a consequence of a temporal decoupling of evolutionary innovations between fungi and plants, Paleozoic coal abundance was likely the result of a unique combination of everwet tropical conditions and extensive depositional systems during the assembly of Pangea.
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