| The biology and evolutionary history of fungi is incredibly fascinating. To my (admittedly layman) understanding, they're sort of life's premiere resource extractors. Their whole thing is breaking down things that other life can't, so it's not surprising at all that some species can consume oil. We know they co-evolved with plants, and one theory suggests that fungi allowed plants to make the jump from water to land by using their hyphae to act as a proto-root system, unlock nutrients like phosphorus from the soil, and transport water, while early land plants provided sugars produced from photosynthesis in return. One of the main differentiations that might have led to the split between proto-fungi and proto-animals is their nutrient acquisition strategy. The organism that would become fungi had extracellular digestion, while the organism that would become animals captured and ingested other organisms. This split led to different approaches to cellular adhesion along with different developmental and signaling pathways (different strategies for achieving homeostasis for instance). --- If you want to read about some really wild stuff, look up the Late Paleozoic era in the Carboniferous period. Basically plants evolved Lignin (wood) but there was nothing in the world that could break it down so it rapidly accumulated along with a hyperoxgenated atmosphere due to the extensive growth. This meant there were 8 foot long millipedes and dragonflies that size of crows flying around. There were also massive forest fires spanning the globe since fire was one of the only ways to get rid of the lignin until, eventually, some fungi evolved to take care of the problem. |
That was my understanding too until recently, when I have read in a couple of places that things might not have been like that. Checking the Wikipedia article about Carboniferous [1] it seems there is not consensus yet:
"There is ongoing debate as to why this peak in the formation of Earth's coal deposits occurred during the Carboniferous. The first theory, known as the delayed fungal evolution hypothesis, is that a delay between the development of trees with the wood fibre lignin and the subsequent evolution of lignin-degrading fungi gave a period of time where vast amounts of lignin-based organic material could accumulate. Genetic analysis of basidiomycete fungi, which have enzymes capable of breaking down lignin, supports this theory by suggesting this fungi evolved in the Permian. However, significant Mesozoic and Cenozoic coal deposits formed after lignin-digesting fungi had become well established, and fungal degradation of lignin may have already evolved by the end of the Devonian, even if the specific enzymes used by basidiomycetes had not. The second theory is that the geographical setting and climate of the Carboniferous were unique in Earth's history: the co-occurrence of the position of the continents across the humid equatorial zone, high biological productivity, and the low-lying, water-logged and slowly subsiding sedimentary basins that allowed the thick accumulation of peat were sufficient to account for the peak in coal formation."
One way or another, I find fascinating how different the planet has been along its geologic periods.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Coal_formation