And if all mold spores went extinct suddenly, would the world be better or worse?
In: Biology
Hundreds of millions of years ago there were no trees. Then plants evolved a method to make lignum which is the woody tissue that trees are made from. It took a further 60 million years for fungi and molds to evolve a method to break that lignum down and decompose trees when they died.
In that 60 million year period trees dominated the planet and when they died they turned into coal. All the coal was made in that time before fungi and mold could ‘eat’ lignum. No coal has been made since then.
So if mold and fungi suddenly went extinct, trees wouldn’t decompose when they died, and we would eventually have lots of new coal.
Latest Answers