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Long Before Trees Overtook the Land, Our Planet Was Covered by Giant Mushrooms
Good News Network ^ | Apr 26, 2023 | Andy Corbley

Posted on 04/28/2023 1:03:10 PM PDT by nickcarraway

Cast a net back 450 million years ago to the Ordovician Era, and you wouldn’t capture anything more than the ancestors of millipedes and worms.

However, you might notice tall 29-feet-tall (8 meters) trunks without branches or leaves, towering over a landscape of newly-evolved vascular plants.

These trunks, which have been found as fossils all over the world, are now strongly believed to be mushrooms—giant fungal towers that mean the kingdom of fungi produced the first giant land organism.

The idea of a ‘fungal forest’ is one that’s often reproduced in fantasy and science-fiction writing. Mushrooms, for many, many reasons, are extremely attractive to the human eye and imagination. From Super Mario living in a mushroom-powered world at times, to the visual art in James Cameron’s Avatar, why have trees when you could have mushrooms?

In 2008, a large trunk-like fossil was uncovered in Saudi Arabia. Identified as a Prototaxite, it presented more evidence of the fact that these strange biological spires from the mists of evolutionary past are mushrooms. First found in 1843, Prototaxites have been called lichens, algae, trees, and even large mats of liverworts that had been rolled up before they were fossilized.

However, several key features have repeatedly brought scientists like C. Kevin Boyce, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago, who has published several papers on Prototaxites, back to the theory that they were fungi.

“A 6-meter-fungus doesn’t make any sense, but here’s the fossil,” he told New Scientist in 2007. “No matter what argument you put forth, people say it’s crazy.”

They are made up of narrow tube-like structures 20-50 microns in diameter that weave around one another, and filaments that are even thinner and have inner perforate walls—a trait found only in red algae and fungi.

Another aspect is their carbon content. Atmospheric CO2—carbon-12 and carbon-13 molecules—should be the same for all plants that live during the same period. Prototaxites is different in this regard; its carbon makeup is different compared to all other plants of the immediate stage in the Ordovician Era during which it lived.

Amazingly, even this far back, paleobotanists have been able to detect interactions with the giant fungal towers and their environment. Prototaxites mycelia, the thread-like root structures of a fungus, have been found invading the tissue of nearby vascular plants, and some of the spire fossils have been speckled with the bio-molecules often associated with the algae—suggesting it could have been subject to parasitism.

It’s amazing to imagine a world where fungus towered over a forest of moss, lichen, and the earliest plants, the whole landscape would seem quite miniaturized.


TOPICS: History; Miscellaneous; Outdoors
KEYWORDS: dietandcuisine; godsgravesglyphs; ordovician; paleontology; shrooms
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To: dfwgator

LOL


21 posted on 04/28/2023 3:18:43 PM PDT by Michael.SF. ( Biden-Fetterman in ‘24: It’s a no brainer)
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To: nickcarraway

woody plats which used lignin came into fore about 350 mil
years ago

Reason for vast coal seams dating to that time are that bacteria/fungi could not decompose the lignin allowing the undecayed plant remains to accumulate and then be buried under sediments


22 posted on 04/28/2023 4:10:40 PM PDT by njslim
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To: BenLurkin

Looks like something out of 1960’s children TV show HR PUF ‘N Stuf


23 posted on 04/28/2023 4:12:51 PM PDT by njslim
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To: nickcarraway
A couple of illustrations that show what they looked like:

Sorry, no mushroom caps. Mushrooms as we know them needed another 500 million years to figure out their modern appearance.

24 posted on 04/28/2023 4:23:43 PM PDT by Alas Babylon! (Gov't declaring misinformation is tyranny: “Who determines what false information is?” )
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To: Michael.SF.

Heard about a girl who only dates mushrooms. She’s looking for a fungi! Pah-dump.


25 posted on 04/28/2023 6:41:18 PM PDT by Qwapisking ("IF the Second goes first the First goes second" L.Star )
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To: GaltAdonis

Looks like my backyard!! Bring out the butter.


26 posted on 04/29/2023 2:52:57 AM PDT by MadMax, the Grinning Reaper (Figures )
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To: njslim
"...1960’s children TV show HR PUF ‘N Stuf..."

.

I remember that show.
I wasn't a big fan of it, but would watch the tail end of it
waiting for Speed Racer or Ultraman...


27 posted on 04/29/2023 1:08:24 PM PDT by GaltAdonis
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To: null and void

28 posted on 04/29/2023 1:16:38 PM PDT by abb
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To: nickcarraway; StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; 1ofmanyfree; 21twelve; 24Karet; ...
Sounds delicious. Thanks nickcarraway.

29 posted on 04/29/2023 1:28:24 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (NeverTrumpers are Republicans the same way Liz Cheney is a Republican.)
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To: nickcarraway

https://search.brave.com/search?q=attack+of+the+mushroom+people


30 posted on 04/29/2023 1:29:04 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (NeverTrumpers are Republicans the same way Liz Cheney is a Republican.)
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To: SunkenCiv

Thanks for posting.

I ate one of those damn things and got heartburn.

Although I didn’t know I had heartburn for two days.

5.56mm


31 posted on 04/29/2023 1:45:03 PM PDT by M Kehoe (Quid Pro Joe and the Ho have got to go)
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To: nickcarraway
Giant Groundsels. Not mushrooms like in the article but these still exist.


32 posted on 04/29/2023 1:48:19 PM PDT by Pelham (Joe Biden, Brain of the American Left)
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To: M Kehoe

Imagine how much beef one would need to make enough stroganoff to use just one of these monsters...


33 posted on 04/29/2023 1:50:38 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (NeverTrumpers are Republicans the same way Liz Cheney is a Republican.)
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To: nickcarraway
Thanks, a very interesting organism. Here is a 6 min YT

When Giant Fungi Ruled https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G64DagHuOg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites

34 posted on 04/29/2023 3:15:42 PM PDT by AdmSmith (GCTGATATGTCTATGATTACTCAT)
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To: SunkenCiv

No trees?

No organic matter?

What did the mushrooms eat?....................


35 posted on 05/01/2023 6:17:19 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.....................)
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To: Red Badger

It didn’t say “no organic matter”, it said, “before trees”.


36 posted on 05/01/2023 8:10:02 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (NeverTrumpers are Republicans the same way Liz Cheney is a Republican.)
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