Mystery fossil turns out to be giant fungus

[FungalFractoids]

Mystery fossil turns out to be giant fungus

Tue 24 Apr 2007, 6:01 GMT

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - Scientists have identified the Godzilla of fungi, a giant, prehistoric fossil that has evaded classification for more than a century, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

A chemical analysis has shown that the 20-foot-tall (6-metre) organism with a tree-like trunk was a fungus that became extinct more than 350 million years ago, according to a study appearing in the May issue of the journal Geology.

Known as Prototaxites, the giant fungus originally was thought to be a conifer. Then some believed it was a lichen, or various types of algae. Some suspected it was a fungus.

"A 20-foot-fungus doesn't make any sense. Neither does a 20-foot-tall algae make any sense, but here's the fossil," C. Kevin Boyce, a University of Chicago assistant professor of geophysical sciences, said in a statement.

Francis Hueber of the National Museum of Natural History first suggested the fungus possibility based on an analysis of the fossil's internal structure, but had no conclusive proof.

Boyce and colleagues filled in the blanks, comparing the types of carbon found in the giant fossil with plants that lived about the same time, about 400 million years ago.

If Prototaxites were a plant, its carbon structures would resemble similar plants. Instead, Boyce found a much greater diversity in carbon content than would have been expected of a plant.

Fungi, which include yeast, mold and mushrooms, represent their own kingdom, neither plant nor animal. Once classified as plants, they are now considered a closer cousin to animals but they absorb rather than eat their food.

Samples of the giant fungi have been found all over the world from 420 million to 350 million years ago during a period in which millipedes, bugs and worms were among the first creatures to make their home on dry land. No animals with a backbone had left the oceans yet.

The tallest trees stood no more than a couple of feet (a metre) high, offering little competition for the towering fungi.

Plant-eating dinosaurs had not yet evolved to trample Prototaxites' to the ground. "It's hard to imagine these things surviving in the modern world," Boyce said.

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[Μορφέας]

no pictures!?

[Greeny]

If only the modern world had 20 foot tall magic mushies now that people would make for one hell of a trip

[FungalFractoids]

no pictures!?

[naja naja]

Why did they need such big shrooms? Well thats easy, imagine the size of a dinosaur shit

[devance]

If I had my shrinking ray operating I could live in my moss world[20 feet by 20 feet] with giant mushrooms and my moss forest.

Let you know if it happens if don't bushwacked by lion mite.

[paradox]

someone once mentioned that there were no fungi in the fossil record.

is this really true?

is this the first ever discovered?

[FungalFractoids]

^^^

Samples of the giant fungi have been found all over the world from 420 million to 350 million years ago during a period in which millipedes, bugs and worms were among the first creatures to make their home on dry land. No animals with a backbone had left the oceans yet.

[ThunderIdeal]

damn. strike one to the theory of fungal panspermia.

it's still entirely plausible but if fungi hadn't appeared until very recently on earth, that would virtually prove that it came from outerspace.

it was probably me who mentioned it, talking about McKennas theory, but i may have imagined the part where he said there was no really old fossils.

nevertheless, 420 million years still makes fungus much younger than plant and animal life, but that's probably because it doesn't live in the ocean (to my knowledge).

[swinelover]

damn. strike one to the theory of fungal panspermia.

it's still entirely plausible but if fungi hadn't appeared until very recently on earth, that would virtually prove that it came from outerspace.

it was probably me who mentioned it, talking about McKennas theory, but i may have imagined the part where he said there was no really old fossils.

nevertheless, 420 million years still makes fungus much younger than plant and animal life, but that's probably because it doesn't live in the ocean (to my knowledge).

Ferns and punga are the first green hybrid of the mushroom trees of which we have the remains of the ark in newzealand with some 400 odd species..These plants perpetuate themselves byreleasing spores from unfurling fonds that eventually become the branches of the plant (trees)!..The missing link?

[Rev]

nice

Panspermia ala McKenna is a goo example of not takeing yourself too seriously

and a good argumnet for the peyote cutures tradition of NOT sharing your visions in public lest your a marakame/trained shaman

thats the cosmic joke in the shamanic endeavour , some truth, some bullshit, no idea which is which

[ThunderIdeal]

i believe current thought in botany is that ferns evolved from moss. there is a green stalky thing that grows here, believed to be 'the missing link'. spores and basic vascular system?

i've don't think fungi and plants have much in common at all, they don't seem to share a common origin (unless you go way back)