Scientists have confirmed that a 26ft tall, tree-trunk-shaped organism, first discovered in Scotland in 1843, isn't a fungus or plant, but an entirely distinct evolutionary branch of life

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• someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  But new research from the University of Edinburgh and National Museums Scotland has shown the fossil is neither fungus nor plant, but a new lifeform that became extinct around 370 million years ago.

  Sandy Hetherington, the lead co-author and research associate at National Museums Scotland, said: “They are life, but not as we now know it, displaying anatomical and chemical characteristics distinct from fungal or plant life, and therefore belonging to an entirely extinct evolutionary branch of life.”

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  • victorz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    an entirely extinct evolutionary branch of life

    Pardon my ignorance, I seem to have misunderstood the meaning of “extinct” (?).

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    • someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      It’s a fossil.

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  • molestme247@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    ‘They are life’ wtf? LoL

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    • wewbull@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      …because it’s multiple lifeforms making a single structure. The plural is correct.

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• cryptTurtle@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Wiki has a breakdown of the debate and how it’s evolved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites

  Neat stuff

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  • calliope@retrolemmy.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    This has absolutely blown my mind!

    This looks exactly like the kind of whose ancestors would, over millions of years, eventually mutate to become a tree.

    The polished fossil in the Wikipedia article looks a shocking amount like wood!

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    • Naz@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Dude; I think you’re absolutely correct.

      It looks like a proto-tree

      Also: Trees aren’t a uniform genus, but this goes to show, on any planet that has photosynthesis, trees will eventually evolve spontaneously

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    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      there were “trees” before actual trees evolved. in the carbiniferous, mostly from lycophytes,

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  • Phoenix3875@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    One of the linked papers thinks it’s actually horizontal rather vertical, as people have guessed originally.

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• ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Spooky phallus.

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  • Triumph@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    That doesn't narrow it down.

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• lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  My guess is that it’s a relative of red algae and plants/Viridiplantae, but not quite either.

  At least one source mentions it produces lignin or something similar; lignin is present in both clades I mentioned. However since it doesn’t do photosynthesis we can rule out belonging to those clades, I genuinely don’t think evolution would favour ditching phycoerythrin or chlorophyll, so odds are it never developed either.

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  • doubtingtammy@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    However since it doesn’t do photosynthesis we can rule out belonging to those clades,

    There are plants and algae that don’t do photosynthesis (although I think they still have vestigial chloroplast?)

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    • lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Non-photosynthetic plants (like ghost pipes) are typically rather small parasites of other plants, that for some reason lost access to good sunlight (such as being so deep in a forest that other plants call dibs on those yummy photons). I don’t see how it would be the case here, given the fossil in question is 8m tall, and apparently it predates actual (Viridiplantae) trees. And I think the same reasoning applies to a potential Rhodophyta = red alga.

      In fact the size is bugging me. Why did it grow so big? Plants usually do this because they’re trying to outcompete other plants, but the Wikipedia article about the taxon suggests it was heterotrophic.

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• Zacryon@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  About 7,9248 m

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  • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Decimal commas are a lie to cover up that they found Yggdrasil

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• Maeve@kbin.earth ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  https://archive.ph/LEcGT

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