Science & Technology

Earth was once covered in giant mushrooms

By T.K. Randall
March 22, 2017 ·  9 comments

Huge towers of fungus would have dominated the landscape. Image Credit: CC BY 2.0 wonderferret The terrestrial landscape was very different 400 million years ago - so much so in fact that, rather than plants and trees, this prehistoric era was dominated by Prototaxites - tall spire-like structures that scientists have been struggling to understand since their discovery back in 1859.

These days it is generally believed that these peculiar spires were actually giant mushrooms."A 6-meter fungus would be odd enough in the modern world, but at least we are used to trees quite a bit bigger," said geophysicist C. Kevin Boyce of the University of Chicago in Illinois. "Plants at that time were a few feet tall, invertebrate animals were small, and there were no terrestrial vertebrates."

"This fossil would have been all the more striking in such a diminutive landscape."


Source: Smithsonian Magazine | Comments (9)

Tags: Mushrooms