Long before plants overtook the planet, the Earth was covered in giant, tree-sized mushrooms.
(Source)
This sounds bogus but check the source - Smithsonian Mag. Weird, but apparently according to the SM article I was linked to, true.
your friendly neighborhood autistic with paleontology as a special interest, here to expand on this a bit!
the image is fake. but:
currently, the world’s largest single organism IS a mushroom. it’s a massive growth of honey mushrooms, growing under a forest in oregon. it takes up about 4 square miles, stretched out over 60 miles.
we don’t know exactly how old it is, but based on it’s growth rate, it’s anywhere between 2000-8650 years old. (!!! *excitement*)
the caption is also true, although also completely unrelated to the (fake) picture. here are real pictures of them:
(lol)
the fossils found are called prototaxites, and there’s actually still some debate about what exactly they are- mostly because a lot of scientists simply can’t wrap their heads around the idea of giant mushrooms covering the earth. the alternate theories of what they were are lichen or rolled-up formations of moss, but giant mushrooms seems to be the leading theory.
whatever they were, they were everywhere, and at aprox. 20 feet tall, they were the tallest organisms on land from approximately 420 million to 350 million years ago.
fan art!!!
conclusion: ANCIENT EARTH HAD GIANT DONGS GROWING OUT OF IT. ALL OVER THE PLACE.
thank you for your time.
