Scientists have discovered in South Africa the remains of fungi, which may be the oldest multicellular organisms on Earth. As reported by Phys.. Org, a discovery estimated to be 2.4 billion years old, can force scientists to reconsider the evolution of these organisms.

As the publication emphasizes, earlier the earliest representative of eukaryotes were the remains, whose age was estimated at 1.9 billion years.

New fossils were discovered at a depth of 800 meters. As the researchers emphasize, they are notable not only for their age, but also for their origin. Previously, scientists assumed that the first mushrooms appeared on earth. Discovered the same mushrooms appeared and flourished under the ocean floor, hiding in crevices of volcanic rock.

Researchers have discovered traces of life by studying the rocks that were formed in the vicinity of underwater volcanoes that existed on the site of modern South Africa 2.4 billion years ago. There are no doubts in the organic origin of these fossils, since both the structure and the complexity of their arrangement could not have been generated by inanimate nature.

The lava surrounding the bubbles was 2.4 billion years old, not 2.2 billion years, as it was thought before.

The additional 200 million years in dating are very important, since it was at this time that the amount of oxygen on the Earth increased sharply. And the oldest mushrooms, as it turns out, existed on the planet before the so-called "oxygen disaster".

Earlier it was reported that on the island of Unashalka in the central part of the Aleutian Islands, fossil remains of a mammal similar to the hippopotamus that lived on the planet 23 million years ago. According to paleontologists, the animal did not chew food, but captured it as a vacuum cleaner.