NAME Palaeomycites Meschinelli 1902.
AGE    AGE span:  mya
K&J CLASSIFICATION (2000) See REMARKS from Kalgutkar & Jansonius (2000) under Palaeomycites.
FIGURE(S)
FIGURE REFERENCE
SPECIES, AUTHORITY Rhizophagites Rosendahl 1943, p. 131.
LOCATION
ORIG DESCRIPTION* ORIGINAL DIAGNOSIS: Mycelium consisting of subdichotomously branched, more or less tortuous, aseptate, thick-walled hyphae, with unilateral projections, pale yellow to light brown and varying in thickness from 6.5 to 20.7 µm, producing terminally ovate or short pyriform or subspherical, yellowish brown to dark brown vesicles, varying in size from 42 x 46 to 103 x 124 µm, with walls considerably thicker than the walls of the mature hyphae, later becoming variously occluded by basal plugs or septa at the neck of the stalk or in the stalk or by a second wall forming around the contents, sometimes a second vesicle is formed within by proliferation from the stalk; contents made up of numerous granules, oil globules and a number of angular crystal-like bodies, vacuoles occasionally present.
COMMENTS*
PUBLICATION REFERENCE Rosendahl CO. 1943. Some fossil fungi from Minnesota; Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, v. 70, p. 126-138.
K&J REMARKS Srivastava (1968) was first to designate Rhizophagites butleri as type species; Jansonius & Hills (1977, card no. 3397) were first to select fig. 2 as its type specimen.

With reference to Rhizophagites, Srivastava (1968) remarked, "Butler (1939) reported some fossil fungi from glacial clays underlying muskegs in the neighbourhood of Edmonton, Alberta. These fossil fungi were described under the extant genus Rhizophagus -- a vesicular-arbuscular type of mycorrhizal fungi. Rosendahl (1943) recovered similar fungal elements from the Pleistocene deposits of Minnesota. He designated the form-genus Rhizophagites for such fossil fungi that have similarity to the extant members of Rhizophagus. Wilson (1965) reported the occurrence of abundant Rhizophagites in the Pleistocene of Oklahoma, and questioned Rosendahl's statement that Rhizophagites probably became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene.

Endogone is also a vesicular-arbuscular type of mycorrhizal fungi. Gerdemann & Nicholson (1963) described six different types of Endogone spores from Scottish soils. The vesicular bodies of the fungus described here resemble Endogone spores".

Aplanosporites may be comparable to Palaeomycites Meschinelli 1902 (non Renault 1896) and Rhizophagites Rosendahl 1943.

Taylor et al (1995) described Glomites rhyniensis from the Rhynie chert, and considered that there were many characters, including interradical arbuscules, that show similarity with the modern genus Glomus. They suggested that the combination of characters shared by the fossil and modern forms indicate an ancient origin of lineages leading to Glomus. Kalgutkar and Jansonius (2000) consider Rhizophagites to be more similar to Palaeomycites than to Glomites, as they had no evidence of arbuscular mycorrhizal hyphae preserved in association with it. Taylor et al. also thought that other dispersed spores and hyphae described from the Rhynie chert by Kidston & Lang (1921) may belong in Palaeomycites.

Kalgutkar and Jansonius (2000) find no means to morphologically differentiate the fossil dispersed sporangia of mycorrhizal fungi in a meaningful way. There may be little biostratigraphic use for these forms, although they may have significance in ecological analysis. Kalgutkar and Jansonius (2000) saw no reason for maintaining the various genera that have been proposed for fossil fungal sporangia of this type, and therefore transfer all species assigned to Rhizophagites, including the type, to Palaeomycites, which is the senior synonym.
TYPE TYPE: Rhizophagites butleri [type species designated by S.K. Srivastava 1968], p. 131, fig. 2 [lectotype specimen designated by Jansonius & Hills (1977), card no. 3397].
ALL NAMES (Including synonyms) Palaeomycites Meschinelli 1902.;
SERIAL NUMBER 1537
PUBLIC COMMENTS
 *For source, see Publication Reference.