Prehistoric fungi

Paleomycology is the study of fossil fungi. Paleomycology is considered a subdiscipline of paleobotany, centered on mushrooms, fungal spores, and hyphae preserved in sediment layers and rock. Fungi have been found in the palaeoecological record as far back as the Paleozoic era, with evidence of influencing the evolutionary processes of early flowering plants.

Gondwanagaricites (meaning "Gondwanan mushroom fossil") is an extinct monotypic genus of gilled fungus in the order Agaricales from the Early Cretaceous Crato Formation of Brazil. It contains the single species G. magnificus, and it is the oldest known mushroom fossil known to date.

Protomycena is an extinct monotypic genus of gilled fungus in the family Mycenaceae, of order Agaricales. At present it contains the single species Protomycena electra, known from a single specimen collected in an amber mine in the Cordillera Septentrional area of the Dominican Republic. The fruit body of the fungus has a convex cap that is in diameter, with distantly spaced gills on the underside. The curved stipe is smooth and cylindrical, measuring thick by long, and lacks a ring. It resembles extant (currently living) species of the genus Mycena. Protomycena is one of only five known agari

Tortotubus is an early (Ordovician to Devonian) terrestrial fungus. Its growth trajectory can be ascertained from its fossils, which occur across the globe from the Ordovician to the Devonian. These fossils document foraging activities of slender, cell-wide exploratory hyphae; when these hit a source of food, they produced secondary branches that grew back down the original filament, covered themselves with an envelope, and served as pipes to shuttle nutrients to other parts of the organism. Today, mycelium with this growth pattern is observed in the mushroom-forming fungi.