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Natural History: ​99-Million-Year-Old “Zombie” Infections Unearthed in Ancient Amber

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19 June 2025
By James Hamilton

Fungi can be seen growing out of the head of an insect encased in 99-million-year-old amber.  CREDIT Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, NIGPAS

A remarkable discovery frozen in time has revealed that even during the age of dinosaurs, parasitic fungi were already turning insects into zombies.

In a study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, an international team of scientists - including researchers from London’s Natural History Museum - has uncovered two new species of fungi preserved in 99-million-year-old Burmese amber. These ancient fungi were found erupting from the bodies of their insect hosts, providing some of the oldest and rarest fossil evidence of fungal infection in the insect world.

The new species, Paleoophiocordyceps gerontoformicae and Paleoophiocordyceps ironomyiae, were discovered infecting a juvenile ant and a fly, respectively. They belong to a group of fungi known as entomopathogenic fungi - a terrifyingly fascinating class of parasites that hijack insect bodies, ultimately killing their hosts in gruesome and highly specific ways.

If that sounds like science fiction, it’s not. In fact, you may recognise the modern version of this fungus from The Last of Us, the hit game and TV series that catapulted the real-life "zombie-ant fungus" into pop culture fame.

“It’s fascinating to see some of the strangeness of the natural world that we see today was also present at the height of the age of the dinosaurs,” says Professor Edmund Jarzembowski, associate scientist at the Natural History Museum and co-author of the study.

While these modern-day fungi continue to control insect populations across the globe - infecting everything from cicadas to beetles - the discovery of their ancient relatives offers an unprecedented window into how long these parasitic relationships have existed.

Their importance isn’t just academic. Entomopathogenic fungi act as natural population control agents, keeping ecosystems balanced by targeting specific insect species. That they were already playing this role nearly 100 million years ago speaks to their ecological significance across deep time.
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Yet finding fossil evidence of them is extraordinarily rare. Fungi are soft-bodied, and their microscopic threads, known as hyphae, don’t preserve well. Spotting them embedded in amber, especially inside or protruding from the bodies of hosts, is the scientific equivalent of winning the lottery.

This discovery not only deepens our understanding of how fungi and insects have co-evolved, but it also reinforces the idea that parasitism has long been one of nature’s most powerful and complex relationships.

“This is a truly exceptional glimpse into the past,” says Prof. Jarzembowski. “It reminds us that many of the weird and wonderful behaviors we see in today’s ecosystems have been around for tens of millions of years.”
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Want to Learn More?
The full paper, Cretaceous entomopathogenic fungi illuminate the early evolution of insect–fungal associations, is available here.

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