Blue stain fungi infecting an 84-million-year-old conifer from South Africa.

Fossil fungi are frequently observed in association with fossil plants in a geological record that dates back over 400 million years to the beginning of the Devonian Period (e.g., Taylor et al., 2015; Krings et al., 2018; Krings and Harper, 2019; Strullu-Derrien et al., 2014, 2018). Despite this lengthy fossil record, studies of wood colonizing fungi are relatively few (e.g., Pujana, et al., 2009; Mc Loughlin & Strullu-Derrien, 2015; Feng et al., 2015; Gnaedinger et al., 2015; Harper et al. 2017; Scaramuzza dos Santos et al., 2020; Tian et al., 2020).