Winfrenatia

Winfrenatia is the oldest known terrestrial lichen, known from fossils preserved in the lower Devonian Rhynie chert.

It comprises a thallus, made of layered, aseptate hyphae, with a number of depressions on its top surface. Each depression contains a net of hyphae holding a sheathed cyanobacterium. The fungus appears to be related to the Zygomycetes, and the photosynthetic partner of photobiont resembles the coccoid cyanobacteria Gloeocapsa and Chroococcidiopsis. There may be two separate algae, making the lichen a symbiosis of three organisms.