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Long Before Trees Overtook the Land, Earth Was Covered by Giant Mushrooms
- aktau 8y agoWhen I read the title, I immediately thought of Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (1864). The flora are described as consisting of "...surrounded by a rocky coastline covered in petrified trees and giant mushrooms".
- JKCalhoun 8y agoThe obscure Japanese horror: "Mantango" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matango https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matango).
- PeterSmit 8y agoRe-post. Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6669659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6669659
- mirimir 8y agoThe title should include "(2013)". Edit: Maybe change this to https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jan/16/strangest-things-fossils-reveal-how-fungus-shaped-life-on-earth https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jan/16/strangest-th...
- shaki-dora 8y agoOr (350,000,000 BC)
- fouc 8y agoA landscape populated with fungus-like spires of 6-8 meters tall. Amazing. Makes me think of Omnivore (Of Man and Manta, #1) by Piers Anthony. A planet full of fungus, with fungoid animals.
- andai 8y agoWhat were the animals like? http://www.earthexplodes.com/comics/070/ http://www.earthexplodes.com/comics/070/
- staticelf 8y agoThe question is how large the organisms must have been under ground: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141114-the-biggest-organism-in-the-world http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141114-the-biggest-organism...
- benj111 8y agoThis links to a wikipedia page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites So they don't look like toadstools. (sorry) I'm confused about how these fit in the ecosystem though. Are these still just the fruiting bodies? Are they permanent?
- sampo 8y agoIt doesn't sound very plausible to grow such sturdy and tall structure only for a fruiting body, so you can drop your spores from a bit higher. But a tree-like structure feels plausible, it they were in symbiosis with algae (which would make them lichens, technically) and they did photosynthesis.
- benj111 8y agoI was thinking on the same lines, although are they still mushrooms in that case? Plus there precedents for very tall flowering/fruiting spikes
- thaumasiotes 8y agoI was wondering something similar. Why does fungus want to be tall? Trees are tall so they can reach the sunlight, allowing them to overshadow and kill plants that would grow under the trees if it wasn't so dark there. But fungus doesn't need light.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Balero 8y agoPerhaps as a means of distributing spores? The higher up the spores are released the further they will spread.
- blahedo 8y agoI'm not clear from the Wikipedia page whether those illustrations reflect actual "we found branching specimen fossils" knowledge, or speculation based on "we think it's tree-ish so it must branch". The illustrations that show branching both appear to date from the 19th century.
- alex_duf 8y agoMakes me think about that Tintin cover: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/711FqYcc7eL._SY550_.jpg https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/711FqYcc7eL...
- theandrewbailey 8y agoOr many places from Morrowind: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/elderscrolls/images/d/d3/Sadrith_Mora_ESO_Promo_Screenshot_%282%29.png/revision/latest?cb=20170201235857 https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/elderscrolls/images/d/d3...
- tjpnz 8y agoOr millions of planets from No Man's Sky.
- jrobn 8y agoSounds like a mushroom bias in their prodecural algorithm.
- jessaustin 8y agoThe universe is biased in favor of mushrooms.
- scrumbledober 8y agoor minecraft: https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Mushroom_Fields https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Mushroom_Fields
- ThomPete 8y agoCompletely unsupported thought: Could the ancient mushrooms and some of the theories about how mushrooms were the reason we became conscious be linked? https://mic.com/articles/14276/magic-mushrooms-how-they-played-a-crucial-role-in-the-evolution-of-human-consciousness https://mic.com/articles/14276/magic-mushrooms-how-they-play...
- nicoburns 8y agoI'm always very skeptical of people who make these kind of claims about psychedelics. One of the effects of psychedelic drugs is that they make people see things as significant or important even where there is nothing significant to be found (in the same way that drugs like MDMA increase mood, even when none of the normal mood-increasing things are present in the environment). This is fine, and can be useful so long as you keep it in mind. But also leads to some users of psychedelics who believe in all sorts of crackpot theories that they think they have discovered through something that seems akin to divine revelation, and are so utterly convinced of their truth that it goes beyond all reason.
- code_duck 8y ago“users of psychedelics who believe in all sorts of crackpot theories that they think they have discovered through something that seems akin to divine revelation” You’re aware that psychedelics have been used extensively for millennia by many cultures in religious ceremonies, right?
- patrickg_zill 8y agoLike the famous anime movie "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds"...?
- whizzkid 8y agoAs a side note, this came to mind when I opened the link. A sad state really.. https://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/9pmqxb/typical_website_in_2018/ https://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/9pmqxb/typical_...
- chmod775 8y agoMobile reddit brings my phone's browser to its knees. It takes ages to load, is unresponsive, and it also takes an extra 10 seconds to click the 8px font that dismisses their mobile app advertisment. I can only assume that mobile app was the best solution they could come up with after they realized they made a horrible mobile site.
- ceejayoz 8y agoI think you've got it backwards. The mobile site is deliberately shitty to drive you towards the app.
- pureliquidhw 8y agoNo, their mobile site was fine UNTIL they made a mobile app. Just like old reddit used to be, it was lightweight and responsive. Once they released a mobile app to compete with the great mobile app offerings that already existed, they crippled the mobile site with all those ads.
- plytheman 8y agoThe real sad state is why is that site uploaded as a reddit video? Instead of linking to the original content it's a video of someone else clicking through? As for the Smithsonian site, I've got AdBlock, uBlock, and ScriptSafe running so I didn't get anything too obnoxious, but it is pretty pitiful that we need that many add-ons just to browse the web.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- briantakita 8y agoThe atmospheric CO2 levels were considerably higher back then. https://phys.org/news/2011-04-araucarias-gauge-ancient-carbon-dioxide.html https://phys.org/news/2011-04-araucarias-gauge-ancient-carbo... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171127152109.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171127152109.h...
- charlesism 8y agoOdd that so many forms of life were a bit larger in the distant past. I gather physicists are sure that gravitational G is a constant (as opposed to a variable). I wish I'd studied more physics so I could evaluate how silly an explanation that would be.
- api 8y agoPaging Terrence McKenna... :)
- brian_herman__ 8y agoEarlier discussion https://mario.nintendo.com/ https://mario.nintendo.com/
- hliyan 8y agoOff-topic / website format: it's disheartening to see that even an institution like the Smithsonian must serve so much crud to deliver us what is essentially 14 sentences + 2 quotations worth of material...
- jrobn 8y agoDollars and cents my man. I really only see this getting worse with IoT devices and more and more tracking. When they finally figured out a reliable way for direct brain to computer interface the human race may be in a dark place indeed.
- jimmaswell 8y agoDream commercials like in Futurama could be a real possibility.
- hinkley 8y agoSubliminal messages are a more immediate threat.
- forgotmypw4 8y agoWith JS disabled, the page loaded in under a second on public WiFi and displayed just fine.
- sillyquiet 8y agoThe (EXCELLENT) PBS channel Eons has video on this too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G64DagHuOg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G64DagHuOg
- zwkrt 8y agoPBS has many very good YouTube channels. I particularly like Space Time (physics) and Infinite Series (math).
- revskill 8y agoStupid ads and notifications prevent me to read this article.
- samirm 8y agoCame across this after the Paul Stamets episode on JRE :)
- momentmaker 8y agoThis TED talk was very interesting about some fungi facts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI5frPV58tY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI5frPV58tY On a side note, I thought this was an interesting take on Bitcoin in relation to fungi. https://medium.com/@BrandonQuittem/bitcoin-is-a-decentralized-organism-mycelium-part-1-3-6ec58cdcfaa6 https://medium.com/@BrandonQuittem/bitcoin-is-a-decentralize...
- ericnyamu 8y agoWhat garbage is this article? God created the world whole.and thats final. So deal with it.
- mml 8y agoTL;DR: we found these things years ago, one group says they're mushrooms, the other group says they're something else. The first group just published something saying they are so, neener.
- booleandilemma 8y agoThe one time I wish there was an artist’s rendering...
- dajohnson89 8y agoSame here --- i manically scrolled looking for a mushroom-covered earth...but alas.
- rezmason 8y agoOne of my favorite science blogs had a short write-up on this five years ago, it's a fun read: http://www.maryanningsrevenge.com/2013/12/awesome-dead-shit-prototaxites.html http://www.maryanningsrevenge.com/2013/12/awesome-dead-shit-...
- ohiovr 8y agoPetrified ancestors of Lenin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin_was_a_mushroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin_was_a_mushroom