Long Before Trees Overtook the Land, Earth Was Covered by Giant Mushrooms

Hello ATSer...

A long time before trees ever inhabited the earth it may have been covered in giant mushrooms. These where massive in size up to 24 feet and would have doted the landscape like giant spires and existed some 420 to 350 million years ago where plants were still becoming established.

Mushrooms played important roles in colonising the surface of the earth and helped nutrients become available from minerals to allow plants to grow. What a different world it would have been imagine a forest full of giant mushrooms. It would have been an alien looking world to us.

Fossilised spirals of what are thought to be these fungi have been available for over 130 years but no one could really figure out what they where. Then in 2007 a report suggested they where members of Prototaxites species although the evidence is still inconclusive

I do not think they looked much like the picture below but you get the idea.

From around 420 to 350 million years ago, when land plants were still the relatively new kids on the evolutionary block and “the tallest trees stood just a few feet high,” giant spires of life poked from the Earth. “The ancient organism boasted trunks up to 24 feet (8 meters) high and as wide as three feet (one meter),” said National Geographic in 2007. With the help of a fossil dug up in Saudi Arabia scientists finally figured out what the giant creature was: a fungus. (We think.)

www.smithsonianmag.com...


Happy Days

Purple

Yum! I'll start building a frying pan

I think Mushrooms/Fungi were very influential in the worlds history, for various reasons! There's a lot of evidence.

Awesome!! I wonder how big the fairies were then?

S&F for teaching me something new today!!

a reply to: VoidHawk

I think Mushrooms/Fungi were very influential in the worlds history, for various reasons! There's a lot of evidence.

Yes they where and they still are the other two kingdoms would not survive if not for the fungi kingdom they all really on each other.

a reply to: Kangaruex4Ewe

Forget about the fairies.... how big were the friggen Smurfs?!?!?!

originally posted by: purplemer

they all really on each other.

I watched a docu a few months back, it was about whether plants interact with each other and their surroundings. they discovered fungi were transporting nutrients from one part of a forest to another part for tree's that couldn't reach the nutrients. If I can remember title of the docu I'll post it.

a reply to: VoidHawk

Venus fly traps (and other carnivorous plants) most definitely interact with their surroundings.

a reply to: purplemer

Hmmm..., 400 million years ago, giant mushrooms (hopefully porcini) ?

.... writing it down in my time traveling list.

a reply to: VoidHawk

Thank you for your reply

These two threads are all about those things and if you are interested worth a read. Plants do use fungi network to send nutrients. The fungi also break up rock from further down in the soil and release it back upto the plants.
More interestingly they also have the ability to send signals the fungi network and are able to communicate with each other. The earth appears to have its own internets..

Why trees are even more awesome than you think
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Plants Communicate Using An Internet Of Fungus
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Happy days

Purple

a reply to: eluryh22

Venus fly traps (and other carnivorous plants) most definitely interact with their surroundings.

Hello thank you for reply.

Plants are not as daft as we might think. The learn from stimuli, they can problem solve, do mazes, they have memory, they even have neurons although they do not have a brain structure.

Purple..

a reply to: purplemer
Wonder how big morels would have grown then.
Wonder how many were safe to eat? A lot of fungus can be toxic.

My father worked in the underground coal mines and he told me story's of huge vines
Fossilized in the walls with stems as thick as tree trunks

Plants in those early days must of been huge
I wonder if our sun had any effect on the growth of plant life
Maybe at that time the sun emitted a more blue spectrum of light
Allowing more growth in size
Or maybe the earth spun slower
Allowing more daylight

Lol we are closer to fungus in our DNA

a reply to: purplemer
looked up largest fungus, and in Oregon there's one called honey fungus that's 2.4 miles across or nearly 4 square mile, wonder if it was around 420 million years ago?

a reply to: purplemer

Actually, I don't think they are daft at all. You are clearly studied in this field and I can tell you I am not. I can say though, that I am fascinated by plants (trees in particular). Actually, at the moment I have a few baby BABY oak trees in cups outside that were acorns about two months ago (sort of an experiment my 4 year old and I are doing).

Perhaps I'm being a bit more animistic than scientific or logical, but there is one thing that I have always wondered about....

Like you said, plants/trees do not have brains. I don't believe they think or feel in any way that humans can relate to. But I wonder if in their own way, a very abstract way, they don't "sense" things. I'll give a poor example...

I've lived in the same house for well over a decade. My wife and I (and now child) spend a LOT of time in the yard. Is it possible that on some vague, abstract level the two trees back their find my family and I "familiar?" Again, not that they know us or have the capacity to care that we exist... but is it completely insane to think that they are "used to us?"

a reply to: piney

Much like with insects.... didn't oxygen (and other gas) levels have a big impact on what got how big?

Mushrooms are so magical.

I love mushrooms.

Silliness aside, I seriously have found a love for fungus food several months ago.

I moved to this city 2 years ago, spring time this year I discovered an amazing farmers market... checked it out, there was one shop that sold ONLY different fungus species.

Mixed bags of different species of fungus/mushrooms, or select the ones you like. It was so strange to me this place existed!

I never thought of mushrooms as food other then a topper like pizza, stir fry or something.. anywyas I bought a bag, specimens I never seen before.

Fell in love

To the shroom gods, ancestors of trees

Yep. I remember reading about this a while ago. It's pretty awesome! It sure does seem like an alien world.

I wonder if they would be psychedelic to us

originally posted by: purplemer
a reply to: eluryh22


The learn from stimuli, they can problem solve, do mazes,

What mazes and what sort of problems?

a reply to: Lucid Lunacy

Your avatar... is that a darker portrayal of Orco form He-Man cartoon? (I think that was the name).
Just curious.

originally posted by: VoidHawk

originally posted by: purplemer

they all really on each other.

I watched a docu a few months back, it was about whether plants interact with each other and their surroundings. they discovered fungi were transporting nutrients from one part of a forest to another part for tree's that couldn't reach the nutrients. If I can remember title of the docu I'll post it.

www.bbc.co.uk...