Re: The Life of New Papers

[Andreas Johansson <andreasj@gmail.com>]

On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 8:28 PM, Jerry D. Harris <jharris@dixie.edu> wrote:
> A couple of new things that I don't think have been mentioned yet:
>
>
> Gong, Y., Xu, R., and Hu, B. 2008. Endolithic fungi: a possible killer for
> the mass extinction of Cretaceous dinosaurs. Science in China, Series D:
> Earth Sciences 51(6):801-807. doi: 10.1007/s11430-008-0052-1.
>
> ABSTRACT: Mycelium-like structures found under ESEM within radial sections
> of fragmental dinosaur eggshells would be the endolithic fungi coexistent
> with dinosaur eggs in the upper part of the Late Cretaceous Hugang Formation
> from the Wenjiaping section of Wenxian, Danjiangkou, northwestern Hubei,
> Central China. The endolithic fungi selectively occurred in the bad
> biomineral zone within the columnar layer of the eggshells, where the
> crowded endolithic fungi penetrated the columnar layer at near-vertical or
> near-horizontal angles. The endolithic fungi are needle-like, ribbon-like
> and silk-like, and 5â18 Âm long, 0.3â0.5 Âm wide at their base, with 
> pointed
> tip, and are unbranched. The hyphae are mainly composed of oxygen, carbon
> and calcium, and are with minor sodium, potassium, chlorine and sulfur. The
> endolithic fungi and host have the same characters in lithification,
> fracture and main chemical composition. We suggested that the episode
> endolithic fungi invading dinosaur eggs may have taken place in the interval
> between after formation of dinosaur eggshells and before their petrification
> and that dinosaur eggs invaded by endolithic fungi would not be normally
> incubated or would only be incubated into venerable and pathologic baby
> dinosaurs to be easily to aborted and contributed to the mass extinction of
> the dinosaurs at the end of Cretaceous.


Do these fungi kill ammonites too?



-- 
Andreas Johansson

Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?