{"id":9760,"date":"2025-06-25T08:39:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T13:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=9760"},"modified":"2025-06-25T08:39:04","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T13:39:04","slug":"stunning-amber-fossil-reveals-last-of-us-type-fungus-likely-lived-alongside-dinosaurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/06\/25\/stunning-amber-fossil-reveals-last-of-us-type-fungus-likely-lived-alongside-dinosaurs\/","title":{"rendered":"Stunning amber fossil reveals \u2018Last of Us\u2019-type fungus likely lived alongside dinosaurs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2025\/06\/24\/science\/amber-insect-zombie-fungi-fossil\">CNN<\/a> A glob of 99 million-year-old amber has preserved an ancient fly in horror show fashion: with the mushroom-like fruiting body of zombie fungus bursting forth from its head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The insect, along with a second specimen of a young ant infected with a similar fungus, are two of the oldest examples of a bizarre natural phenomenon that involves fungal parasites hijacking the bodies of their hosts before ultimately killing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAmber gives us this opportunity to visualize the ancient ecological relationships preserved in fossils,\u201d said Yuhui Zhuang, a doctoral student at the Institute of Paleontology at Yunnan University in southwestern China.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CNN A glob of 99 million-year-old amber has preserved an ancient fly in horror show fashion: with the mushroom-like fruiting body of zombie fungus bursting forth from its head. The insect, along with a second specimen of a young ant infected with a similar fungus, are two of the oldest examples of a bizarre natural [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":9761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coping-with-covid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Screenshot-2025-06-25-at-09.38.01.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9760"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9762,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9760\/revisions\/9762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}