Life before trees: When 8 meter tall mushrooms called Prototaxites used to cover the land, Planet Earth, 420 million years ago.

    by Creative_Recover

    13 Comments

    1. Creative_Recover on

      Prototaxite fossils evaded classification for a long time before people eventually realized that what they were looking at were the remains of giant prehistoric fungi ( [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11701-mystery-prehistoric-fossil-verified-as-giant-fungus/](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11701-mystery-prehistoric-fossil-verified-as-giant-fungus/) ).

      During this early era, there were no tree’s and Europe and America were stuck together in one giant continent ( [http://paleoportal.org/index.php?globalnav=time_space&sectionnav=period&period_id=13](http://paleoportal.org/index.php?globalnav=time_space&sectionnav=period&period_id=13) ). Very few types of plants or animals existed on land yet, which meant that the giant prototaxites dominated the view and would’ve once filled areas with huge thick clouds of spores when they reproduced, creating an eerie alien-looking landscape.

    2. Are these things edible? As in if humans existed at the time, would they be able to cook and eat the edible mushrooms similar to how people cook and eat mushrooms today? Or would these mushrooms be poisonous or be inedible material wise (wood isn’t poisonous but still is inedible for example).

    3. I wonder how it smells, if the fungi in the air would consume you from the inside out or would get you high like laying down in a field of poppies what consumed them if anything. And can we bring them back so I can grow some of my backyard.

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