Quatsinoporites facts for kids

Quatsinoporites is a type of fungus that is now extinct, meaning it no longer exists. It's a special kind of fungus called an agaricomycete. This group includes many mushrooms and bracket fungi we see today. Quatsinoporites is a monotypic genus, which means it only contains one known species, called Quatsinoporites cranhamii.

Scientists only know about this fungus from fossils found in the Apple Bay area of northwestern Vancouver Island. These fossils are from a time called the Barremian age, which was about 125 to 129 million years ago! Quatsinoporites is one of only a few fossil fungi ever found on Vancouver Island.

Discovering Quatsinoporites

This ancient fungus is known from just one fossil piece. It's a part of what's called a "bracket fungus" or "conk." Imagine a hard, shelf-like mushroom growing on a tree – that's a conk.

The fossil, named P13021 E, is kept in the paleobotanical collections at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. It was found in Apple Bay, close to Quatsino Sound on the northwest coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

The fossil conk was preserved inside a special rock called a calcareous nodule. This nodule was found within sandstone rock layers. These rocks formed in a shallow ocean environment long ago, where lots of plant material also got preserved.

How Scientists Studied It

A team of researchers from the University of Alberta first studied this fossil. The team included Selena Smith, Randolph Currah, and Ruth Stockey. They published their findings in 2004 in a science journal called Mycologia.

They named the genus Quatsinoporites because it was found near Quatsino Sound. The "porites" part of the name means it was a polypore fungus, which is a type of fungus with many small holes or pores on its underside. They named the species "cranhamii" to honor Gerald Cranham. He helped by giving many Vancouver Island plant fossils to the University of Alberta for study.

When Quatsinoporites cranhamii was first described, it was the very first fungus species found as a fossil on Vancouver Island. It was also only the third fossil fungus ever found in all of British Columbia. Other fossil fungi, like Cryptodidymosphaerites princetonensis and Palaeoserenomyces allenbyensis, were found earlier near Princeton, B.C.

Another fungus, Appianoporites vancouverensis, was described at the same time as Quatsinoporites. It was found on the eastern side of Vancouver Island. A few years later, another fungus called Margaretbarromyces dictyosporus was also found at the same Appian Way site.

What the Fossil Looks Like

The only fossil piece of Quatsinoporites is a small fragment of the fungus's fruiting body. It measures about 5.0 millimetres (0.20 in) long, 2.0 millimetres (0.079 in) wide, and 3.0 millimetres (0.12 in) deep. It looks like it was worn down by water before it turned into a fossil.

This small piece of the conk has tiny tubes on its surface. There are about three tubes per millimeter, and each tube is very small, ranging from 130 to 540 micrometers wide. (A micrometer is one-millionth of a meter, so these tubes are super tiny!)

To study the fossil, scientists carefully cut the rock nodule into thin slices using a special saw. Then, they used a technique called "cellulose acetate peel" to make slides. They looked at these slides under a powerful microscope to see the tiny details of the fungus.

Scientists believe Quatsinoporites belongs to the family Hymenochaetaceae. This is based on how its pore-filled surface looks and other features. However, because the fossil is so small and worn, some parts of the fungus, like its spores, are still a mystery.