Saturday 25 September 2010

Texan mushroom?

Another article, this time from Reuters:

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 meter) 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.


5 comments:

  1. I seem to be on a roll with mushrooms - sorry. I'll try and make this the last one...

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  2. The cake looks just like her hat! Too funny!

    On our walk yesterday, the kids and I came across two large mushrooms. Just your general white kind with wide caps—sorry! I have no idea when it comes to fungi. But they were so enchanted with our find that they wanted to stay there forever. Unfortunately it was someone's front yard, so we had to move on. Julia said, "I love the way mushrooms smell!" And then Liam started to cry because he and his sister are always on the lookout for things of enchantment and I told him it was time to go. "I want mushroom!" he cried.

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  3. I've just established that - in this country anyway - it is quite legal to gather mushrooms on private property, so long as you don't damage anything else. All the property owner can do is get a court order to ban you from trespassing, which takes weeks.

    Maybe you should go back and get those mushrooms, Amy, but in the USA you are probably more likely to suffer lead-poisoning from picking someone else's mushrooms - from a Colt .45...

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  4. Has anyone licked Prototaxites? I wonder what it tasted like. Still nowt here, other than a brief burst of Parasols. Depressing.

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