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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault. Today we're going to

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Speaker 1: be listening to an episode that originally published December seventeen

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Speaker 1: nineteen about gigantic prehistoric fungus. That's right, prototaxites, I believe

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Speaker 1: is the pronunciation. I think, I think we we labored

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Speaker 1: over it enough that it's stuck in my head. But

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Speaker 1: this is a fun one. I think we we did

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Speaker 1: a little skit for this one with time travelers. At

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Speaker 1: the beginning, the time traveler, for so it will be

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Speaker 1: convenient to speak of him, turned his attention at last

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Speaker 1: the Devonian period. His pale gray eyes shone and twinkled,

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Speaker 1: and his usually pale face became flushed and animated. The

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Speaker 1: calm of morning was upon the world world, and it's greening,

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Speaker 1: the spring time of the Earth. The environment was arid

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Speaker 1: and warm, and everywhere I walked I observed forests of

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Speaker 1: moss and clusters of shrub like ferns, and horse tails.

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Speaker 1: Amid them crept primitive arthropods and something that looked remarkably

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Speaker 1: like a winged insect, though I did not catch it

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Speaker 1: in the act of flight. But there were no leaves,

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Speaker 1: no true trees to lift a canopy above my head.

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Speaker 1: But what I at first took for primitive conifers proved anything.

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Speaker 1: But each of these cylindrical giants stood some twenty feet high,

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Speaker 1: and we were a good yard wide. They towered above

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Speaker 1: the Devonian world like skylight pillars, and I observed just

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Speaker 1: a hint of scores carried away from their bizarre heights.

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Speaker 1: I wonder, then, might these organisms be giant mushrooms? But

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Speaker 1: that's when the more locks came at me. The more locks,

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Speaker 1: I said, surely, the more locks existed far in the future.

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Speaker 1: What were they doing in the Devonian? Well, they stole

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Speaker 1: my time machine and they followed me. But you arrived

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Speaker 1: there in your time, Well, they stole it from the future.

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Speaker 1: But the look time travel is very complicated. No further questions.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to have to blow your mind? A production of

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radios has to work. Hey, are you welcome

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Speaker 1: to stuff to blow your mind? My name is Robert

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Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And in that cold open

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Speaker 1: we had a little fun with H. G. Wells. The

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Speaker 1: time machine, which of course is a is a wonderful novel,

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Speaker 1: well worth seeking out even in today's uh technically advanced times.

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Speaker 1: I remember liking it when I read it, but I

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Speaker 1: don't recall does he actually go into the prehistoric past. Well,

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Speaker 1: he certainly goes into the far, far future, which is

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Speaker 1: kind of my inspiration for that, because he goes he

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Speaker 1: goes so far into the future that the world is

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Speaker 1: just an alien landscape. But one of the fun things

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Speaker 1: is that if you travel back far enough in time,

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Speaker 1: you also encounter an alien landscape like that is what

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Speaker 1: the surface world of the Devonian period four hundred million

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Speaker 1: years ago basically was, and so it was irresistible to

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Speaker 1: use the time traveler. Here is a is a way

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Speaker 1: of sort of the magic name what it might be

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Speaker 1: like to walk amid the strangely strange specimens. That's all

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Speaker 1: this weird Devonian flora and a glimpse in the wild,

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Speaker 1: a living specimen of an organism that continues to mystify

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Speaker 1: us in the past. It's been called a mystery fossil

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Speaker 1: even and that is proto tax i t s. Yes,

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Speaker 1: today we are going to be talking about the world

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Speaker 1: of prehistoric fungus. This is something that I wanted to

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Speaker 1: talk about for a long time because fungus in the

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Speaker 1: fossil record. I think there's actually a lot of interesting

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Speaker 1: stuff we could explore. But the keystone of today's episode

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Speaker 1: is going to be, Yeah, the fossil remains of these

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Speaker 1: giant stylite organisms from hundreds of millions of years ago

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Speaker 1: that we're the tallest standing things of their time, and

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Speaker 1: we don't know for sure what they were. We have

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Speaker 1: we have better ideas than we used to, and we'll

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Speaker 1: get into that as the episode goes on. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: try to imagine yourself as a paleontologist digging into the

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Speaker 1: strata from a pure it hundreds of millions of years ago,

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Speaker 1: where there were no trees, there's no there are no

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Speaker 1: forests on the Earth, but you find these six meter

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Speaker 1: high giant pillars of something that was alive. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: you can see if you look up the images of

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Speaker 1: prototax it t s, you'll you'll see people posing with

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Speaker 1: the fossil remnants. Uh. And it looks like like a

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Speaker 1: massive pillar or even in the way it's broken in

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Speaker 1: some of these uh, these fossils, it looks like it

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Speaker 1: could be the you know, the neckbone of some of

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Speaker 1: some enormous creature. Like there's an enormity to the fossil

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Speaker 1: uh that that makes it so irresistible. It is a

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Speaker 1: giant of the past, but it is not. It is

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Speaker 1: not an animal, it is it is something else. We

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Speaker 1: don't know exactly what prototax it t s looked like

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Speaker 1: when it was alive. They are different interpretations of it,

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Speaker 1: but some of the interpretations uh and in resulting illustrations

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Speaker 1: really give it a kind of almost like a gigaresque

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Speaker 1: or love crafty and appearance of something that looks truly

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Speaker 1: like a um like like pillars, like towers, like little

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Speaker 1: mom like not little you know, towering monoliths um and

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Speaker 1: and certainly they were the largest and tallest feature of

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Speaker 1: the Devonian terrestrial environment. It dominated the early and early

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Speaker 1: Middle Devonian period, though it eventually gives way to the

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Speaker 1: rise of shrubs and early and other early plants in

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Speaker 1: the Late Devonian. But it is, to say the least,

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Speaker 1: a very tantalizing fossil that can continues to be something

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Speaker 1: of a mystery fossil. So to to get to the

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Speaker 1: origin of the fossil find itself, we have to go

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Speaker 1: back roughly a hundred and seventy six years, and that

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Speaker 1: is when in eighteen forty three Canadian born geologist William

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Speaker 1: Edmund Logan unearthed fossil remnants of Devonian flora. And the

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Speaker 1: classification of the Devonian period, by the way, only dates

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Speaker 1: back to the eighteen thirties, so it was you know,

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Speaker 1: kind of a revolutionary time and just geologic discovery in general.

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Speaker 1: The name of the Devonian, of course, comes from the

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Speaker 1: Devon area in England, where some of these uh fossil

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Speaker 1: finds come from. So Logan found uh these specimens in

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Speaker 1: the exposed sections of a Devonian rock on the shores

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Speaker 1: of the believe it's gossip a bay in Quebec, and

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Speaker 1: particularly an area is called seal Cove, which he was

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Speaker 1: mapping for coal and other minerals. Well, this fits in

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Speaker 1: with a great Canadian tradition of of awesome fossil sites

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Speaker 1: being discovered in you know, not originally by paleontologists, but

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Speaker 1: by people developing industry and heavy heavy transport and stuff like.

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Speaker 1: I think about how the the shale beds like the

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Speaker 1: Burgess Shale and the Canadian rockies were originally found because

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Speaker 1: railroad workers who were building railroads through the area. We're

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Speaker 1: finding these stone bugs everywhere, and that eventually attracted the

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Speaker 1: attention of paleontologists to come in and us to gate.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the world of trilobytes, right, and other creatures

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Speaker 1: of course, which we'll get back to later. So I

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Speaker 1: want to note that one of one of my key

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Speaker 1: sources on the the early history of this fossil find

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Speaker 1: uh comes to us from paleo biologist of Francis Huber

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Speaker 1: of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, d C.

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Speaker 1: Who wrote a two thousand and one piece titled Rotted

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Speaker 1: Wood Algae Fungus The History and Life of prototax I T. S. Dawson,

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Speaker 1: eight fifty nine. And it's just a tremendous source on

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Speaker 1: all of this. But it's also very concerned with naming, renaming,

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Speaker 1: and misnaming things, even getting into the various names used

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Speaker 1: by Logan and others to designate the cove in which

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Speaker 1: they found this. But at times it may seem a

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Speaker 1: little tedious if if you read it in full, but

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Speaker 1: UH fair enough citation and uh in miscitation and the

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Speaker 1: illegitimate renaming of things is a vital part of this

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Speaker 1: fossil's human history. Yeah, well, you know, you've got to

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Speaker 1: get people to agree on what they call things, or

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Speaker 1: it's gonna be a lot harder to talk about them

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Speaker 1: and can become quite a dramatic issue as well. Unraveled here. So,

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Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty five, Logan's Devonian Flora fossils passed into

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Speaker 1: the hands of noted Canadian geologist John William Dawson, who,

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Speaker 1: by the way, the mineral Dawsonite is named in his honor.

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Speaker 1: He was particularly taken by a large specimen with the

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Speaker 1: with the peculiar interior structure. It resembled a large tree,

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Speaker 1: but under a microscope he became clear that the fossilized

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Speaker 1: tissue was uh solicified, you know, containing an entangled mesh

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Speaker 1: that resembled fungal my cilia. He even noted the mysilia

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Speaker 1: resemblance himself in his writings, but he didn't really explore

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Speaker 1: it further. Uh, I mean, he did not explore the

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Speaker 1: explore the fungal angle further, but he was very interested

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Speaker 1: in this fossil. He traveled to seal Cove himself and

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Speaker 1: obtained a dish l samples. Okay, so they've found this

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Speaker 1: giant fossilized trunk of something. It looks like it could

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Speaker 1: be the trunk of a tree, but examining it on

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Speaker 1: a microscopic level, it looks more like the texture of

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Speaker 1: fungus than it does the texture of plant matter. Right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: particularly my cilia and then mysilium is the vegetative part

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Speaker 1: of a fungus. Just reminded everybody. It's a It's a

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Speaker 1: mass of branching vein like hiphe that you'll find underground

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Speaker 1: or in whatever. The mushroom or the fruiting body is

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Speaker 1: emerging from the mushroom itself is a death emergence. Life

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Speaker 1: is actually thriving beneath the surface. The mushroom comes up

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Speaker 1: to to release spores. Yeah, it's a reproductive organ. Yeah. Now,

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Speaker 1: the way Dawson interpreted this, this this fossil was Okay,

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Speaker 1: we have something that looks like like fungus. So what

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Speaker 1: we have here is probably a rotting conifer tree, you know,

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Speaker 1: an early conifer tree. It's rotting, it's decomposing. So I'm

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Speaker 1: seeing the decomposed their fungus within the decomposing uh specimen,

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Speaker 1: all of this preserved in a single fossil specimen. Well,

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Speaker 1: that would make sense. It's it is a tree trunk.

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Speaker 1: It's infested with fungal Mysilia type structures, right, and so

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Speaker 1: he gave it the name prototax I T S. Or essentially,

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Speaker 1: first you referring to the U family texas cia, so

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Speaker 1: the U tree right. Yeah, So so the the actual

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Speaker 1: name is is referring to UH conifer resemblance. So he

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Speaker 1: puts these eyes ideas out there, and then, um, you know,

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Speaker 1: quite as a surprise to Dawson, a Scottish botanist by

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Speaker 1: the name of William C. Carruthers proposed a different interpretation. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He said, well, this is perhaps the fossil remains of

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Speaker 1: a very large algae aquatic or perhaps terrestrial in nature. Algae,

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Speaker 1: of course, can grow in weird places like on ice

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Speaker 1: and snow. So he declared a new name. He said, Nope,

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Speaker 1: we're not going to call this prototax I T S.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna call this nemato ficus. Okay, but wait a minute.

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Speaker 1: An algae that like a giant fossilized algae the size

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Speaker 1: of a tree trunk. Yeah yeah, I mean that's creepy.

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Speaker 1: Well yeah. One of the things, and this is pointed

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Speaker 1: out by others that have studied, is like, there's basically

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Speaker 1: no non weird explanation for this weird fossil. We'll get

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Speaker 1: to several comments like that later. Yeah, there's no like

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Speaker 1: normal way of looking at it. Now, Here's here's the

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Speaker 1: thing about Carruthers coming along and saying, no, this is

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Speaker 1: nemo nemato ficus. First of all, there are rules with

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Speaker 1: the naming of things, even at the time, so you're

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Speaker 1: not allowed to just come and give it a new

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Speaker 1: name that it's an illegitimate renaming. So so that alone

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Speaker 1: is kind of weird and and rude. But then also,

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Speaker 1: according to Huber, Carruthers was just scathing and very personal

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Speaker 1: in his criticism. Quote scathing and slanderous uh in terms

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Speaker 1: of critic as sizing Dawson, and it seemed to have

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Speaker 1: like really caught Dawson off guard. Um, you know, based

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Speaker 1: on these descriptions, one is tempted. I don't do not

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Speaker 1: know much about William C. Carruthers, but but just based

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Speaker 1: on Huber's writing, one is tempted debut Caruthers is something

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Speaker 1: of a bully in his field while also being an

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Speaker 1: extremely respected botanist. But then again, perhaps our our our

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Speaker 1: vision of this rivalry is incomplete. Well, if that interpretation

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Speaker 1: is correct, he would not be the only legitimately good

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Speaker 1: scientist who also is lacking in manners and hire another

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Speaker 1: so um. According to Huber, Dawson fought for his initial classification,

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Speaker 1: but but then later he ends up rejecting it, apparently

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Speaker 1: even trying to make it seem as as if he

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Speaker 1: never connected the fossil to conifers at all. And then

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Speaker 1: he himself, in his eight book The Geological History of

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Speaker 1: Plants illegitimately used the name nomato ficus instead of Prototaxi

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Speaker 1: t suh. So I imagine that, at least to the

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Speaker 1: time that Huber was writing in like two thousand one,

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Speaker 1: you don't do this. You don't just like switch the

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Speaker 1: name to something else without a I don't know. I'd

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Speaker 1: imagine a lot of fields have like an international naming

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Speaker 1: committee that if there is going to be a name change,

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Speaker 1: would have to agree on it or something. Yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's it's why for instance, uh, like one's fossil that

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Speaker 1: we've discussed on the on the show before U Basilosaurus okay,

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Speaker 1: uh I hear saw us in there. That means lizard,

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Speaker 1: it means king lizard. But it was not. We know

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Speaker 1: now it was not a lizard at all. It was

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Speaker 1: a mammal. But we we we don't go back and

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Speaker 1: change the name in this case. So it's a similar

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Speaker 1: case here. The name prototax I t stuck and did

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Speaker 1: stick despite carruthers uh notion that we should switch to

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Speaker 1: a different name, and that name also Prototaxids, is still

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Speaker 1: used today but names aside. So Carruthers is pushing this interpretation. Okay,

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Speaker 1: this is not a rotting conifer tree that's full of

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Speaker 1: kind of fungal infestation. This is a giant alga. So

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Speaker 1: what happens with this interpretation, Well, this becomes the dominant

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Speaker 1: interpretation for a while, and it basically goes unquestioned until

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Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen when one Ah Church brings up the possibility

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Speaker 1: that this is a fungus after all, considering the size

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Speaker 1: is achieved by by certain contemporary fungus specimens such as uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, various woody decomposer fun guy. But this idea

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Speaker 1: didn't take off. He seems to have coined Huber. Basically,

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Speaker 1: this guy was ignored and the alta interpretation continued with

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Speaker 1: papers in you know his reason it's a nineteen seventy

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Speaker 1: nine and nineteen eighty three, continuing this threat of interpretation,

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Speaker 1: I think it is worth stepping back to just appreciate

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Speaker 1: again the physical form of this thing we're talking about.

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Speaker 1: The fossil records indicate that whatever this was, alga rotting

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Speaker 1: conifer tree, or even fungus, it was huge. You know.

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Speaker 1: I've seen estimates of a maximum known height of six

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Speaker 1: or even eight meters like twice need to twenty five ft,

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Speaker 1: So you've got a giant six m high stock of

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Speaker 1: whatever it was. So something that was alive at a

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Speaker 1: time when we have no evidence that any vertebrates had

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Speaker 1: yet left the water, there were no trees or anything

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Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, it's it's kind of like it's like

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Speaker 1: a tree. It's not a tree, Yeah, it's a it's

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Speaker 1: a it's a weird column of life that exists before

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Speaker 1: there should be anything like a column. Yeah, and you

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Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, I think that this would have been at

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Speaker 1: a time where this would have been, without question, the

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Speaker 1: tallest living thing on land. No, no trees, nothing stood

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Speaker 1: above it. And I'm trying to imagine the implications of

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Speaker 1: that if we were to live in this world. Because

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Speaker 1: here's one for you. When you think of the word nature,

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Speaker 1: what's the first thing that pops into your head? My

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Speaker 1: very person to person, maybe you're not like me, but

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Speaker 1: I think most people, at least in tree filled ecoregions,

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Speaker 1: think trees when they think nature. Yeah, Or you know,

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Speaker 1: even if I you know, I really love the landscape

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Speaker 1: of of say Arizona, which, of course and coke comes

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Speaker 1: as a variety of different environments. But but even if

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Speaker 1: you're thinking about the desert, you're probably thinking about cacti. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because like the tallest features in a landscape, I think

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Speaker 1: naturally become definitive of that landscape force. When you think city,

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Speaker 1: you think buildings when you think nature. Again, this might

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Speaker 1: be different for people who live and say like treeless environments.

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Speaker 1: Say if you live in a step or something. But

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Speaker 1: if you live in an area with there are trees,

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Speaker 1: the trees become synonymous with nature. They're the iconic life form.

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Speaker 1: Like what is the lorax speak for? You know, the

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Speaker 1: the The suggestion is that he speaks for nature, but

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Speaker 1: he speaks for the trees. Because the trees are nature

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Speaker 1: by being the tallest living objects on the ground, you

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Speaker 1: in some sense assume them to be the icon of nature. Itself.

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Speaker 1: So what is this thing? It's almost like you could

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Speaker 1: imagine that if you were to walk around the landscape

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Speaker 1: of this period where these things were dominant, maybe Early

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Speaker 1: Devonian or whatever, this might be your idea of nature.

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Speaker 1: These giant mounds of whatever they are. Yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: they were basically the floral lords of the earth. There

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Speaker 1: was nothing else to rival them. So I think we

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Speaker 1: should explore more the continuing scientific debate about what the

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Speaker 1: prototaxids is. But before that, let's take a break and

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Speaker 1: then we come back. We can delve into mushroom theory.

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Speaker 1: Thank alright, we're back. So we've been talking about these

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Speaker 1: fossil organisms from hundreds of millions of years ago, known

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Speaker 1: as prototaxids, these giant pillars that used to be by

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Speaker 1: far the tallest thing on land. And there's been this

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Speaker 1: great debate about what these fossils were when they were alive.

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Speaker 1: Was it the trunk of a rotting conifer tree that

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Speaker 1: was full of, you know, fungal fibers. Was it a

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Speaker 1: giant alga or was it in fact a fungus And

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Speaker 1: now we're going to get into the details of the

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Speaker 1: fungus theory. Yeah, despite the conifer versus allergy past for

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Speaker 1: prototax i t s. The most popular hypothesis at the moment, uh,

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Speaker 1: seems to be the fungus hypothesis. Uh. Not to say

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Speaker 1: they are not criticisms or questions regarding the fungus hypothesis,

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Speaker 1: but it does seem to be the most popular interpretation.

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Speaker 1: A giant six meter tall pillar of fungus right now.

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Speaker 1: I do think it is important to note that we

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Speaker 1: are not saying giant mushroom per se, because that brings

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Speaker 1: to mind a certain image like Shitaki's shape, Right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: sort of a super Mario Brothers kind of world or

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Speaker 1: um or something that you would see on a on

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Speaker 1: a black light fantasy painting in a room. Um. You know,

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Speaker 1: we're no nobody is interpreting this is is having looked

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Speaker 1: like a straight up um uh you know, cliche mushroom

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Speaker 1: with an airbrush fairy sitting on top of it. Right.

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Speaker 1: But but basically the fungus into pradition comes comes down

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Speaker 1: to the organism's internal structure. It's composed of interwoven tubes

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Speaker 1: just five to fifty microns across, and this would indicate

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Speaker 1: not a plant but a fun guy alike in or

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Speaker 1: perhaps even an algae. UH. You know, some of this

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Speaker 1: points in that direction here as well. But on this

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Speaker 1: issue I want to turn back to Huber again because

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Speaker 1: this is what he has to say about the algae

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Speaker 1: interpretation and ultimately UH the move towards the fungal interpretation. Quote.

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Speaker 1: In my opinion, prototaxid S does not have the structural

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Speaker 1: anatomy nor morphology of an alga. Chemo taxonomic analysis by

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Speaker 1: Nicholas concluded that the chemical constituents found in prototax it

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Speaker 1: certain fatty acids quton and subarin, differed from modern algae,

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Speaker 1: but did not preclude an algial affinity. Lack of evidence

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Speaker 1: of lignified supporting structures in the otherwise weak tissues UH

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Speaker 1: and presumed erect habit would have imposed considerable stress in

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Speaker 1: a terrestrial habitat. The Presence of the compounds associated with

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Speaker 1: a terrestrial habitat raised the possibility that the genus could

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Speaker 1: survive on land, but did not prevent reiteration that the

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Speaker 1: algal affinity was still possible. The anatomy, morphology, and occurrences

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Speaker 1: cannot be refuted so easily. He also points to UH

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Speaker 1: ninety six transmission electron microscope findings from Rudolph Schmidt Uh

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Speaker 1: and this was a paper titled Septal Pores and Prototaxi

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Speaker 1: s an Enigmatic Devonian plant uh. In this he reveals

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Speaker 1: that sceptal pores are are found here, suggesting fungal affinity.

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Speaker 1: Septal pores are specialized dividing walls between cells, septa found

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Speaker 1: in almost all species of fungi in the phylum Bassidi

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Speaker 1: of my cotta. He points out that the inherent size

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00:20:59,119 --> 00:21:01,960
Speaker 1: of Prototaxi tas has long been a barrier to some

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Speaker 1: when it comes to accepting fungal affinity, and he counters

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Speaker 1: this by pointing out that we have you have various

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Speaker 1: examples of of of quite large contemporary fungi and extensive

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Speaker 1: my silian networks. He poses that perhaps prototaxites itself had

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Speaker 1: a vast underground my silia network as well, but we

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Speaker 1: just don't have fossil evidence of that mysilia network. But

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Speaker 1: the possible picture here is is fascinating an underground kingdom

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Speaker 1: of prototaxids erecting enormous fruiting bodies high into the air

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Speaker 1: to send its spores on the breeze, spreading its kingdom

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Speaker 1: even wider, which causes me to have deeper thoughts about

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Speaker 1: the role of fungus in the evolution of land creatures

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Speaker 1: and land ecosystems. Yeah, this is the kind of of

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Speaker 1: of of mental image that the real hardcore fungus fans

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Speaker 1: I think I could really get behind. This is like,

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Speaker 1: this is a pulse statements during right here, I've got

364
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Speaker 1: a question here. You ever ever wonder why we live

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Speaker 1: on land and not underwater? Um less wet. I mean

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Speaker 1: maybe it seems like a stupid question, but you know

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Speaker 1: I stand by that, Like, why why is it do

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Speaker 1: we live in this evolutionary context land based ecosystems rather

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Speaker 1: than under the water, where we our ancestors came from,

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Speaker 1: where we very well could have remained. Uh. If you

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Speaker 1: picture life on Earth in the Cambrian period about five

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Speaker 1: million years ago, peek under the surface of the water

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Speaker 1: and you would find lots of life. Oceans swarming with

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Speaker 1: strange armies of scuttling, undulating, bilaterally symmetrical animals, billions of

375
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Speaker 1: trial bytes. You've got, you know, these extinct bottom dwelling

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Speaker 1: animals shaped kind of like death metal. Really Pulley's many

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Speaker 1: legged proto arthropods with hardened plates of armor on their backs,

378
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Speaker 1: but also all these other organisms like the low blegged

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Speaker 1: spiked worm that we call Hallucigenia we've talked about that

380
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Speaker 1: show before, a group of creatures called Opabinia, which are

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Speaker 1: swimming arthropods with five eyes and a single long hose

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Speaker 1: like probosis tentacle reaching out the front of the head.

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Speaker 1: It was also the time when complex predator prey relationships

384
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Speaker 1: probably first evolved, with predators, possibly including the huge creature

385
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Speaker 1: called Anomala caress. And it was a time of geologically

386
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Speaker 1: rapid evolution and diversification of marine animal body forms and

387
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Speaker 1: survival strategies. If you look in the period just before

388
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Speaker 1: the Cambrian period, which is known as the edi acron period,

389
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Speaker 1: there you don't find any of this stuff. You find,

390
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Speaker 1: you know, maybe little indications of soft bodied worms, but

391
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Speaker 1: like where are all these animals? And then of course

392
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Speaker 1: they didn't occur in an instant but on a geological

393
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Speaker 1: time scale, all these different animal body forms, with all

394
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Speaker 1: this morphological diversity, it all happens pretty rapidly. But of

395
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Speaker 1: course it has long been the case that we understood

396
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Speaker 1: all this was taking place under the water in the oceans,

397
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Speaker 1: that was simply where the life was back then. Uh, Like,

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Speaker 1: we know from the fossil record that if you go

399
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Speaker 1: back far enough, almost all archaic life on Earth lived

400
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Speaker 1: in the oceans and the Precambrian world. It seems the

401
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Speaker 1: difference between ocean and land was like the difference between

402
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Speaker 1: a lush forest and a lifeless desert. In order to

403
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Speaker 1: survive on land, an animal would have to find a

404
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Speaker 1: way to tolerate dryness, of course, I mean, that's a

405
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Speaker 1: big one, but as well as other threats. You know,

406
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Speaker 1: direct exposure to radiation from a star, which we now

407
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Speaker 1: know as sunlight seems nice to us, but if you're

408
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Speaker 1: not used to it, it's probably pretty bad because it

409
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Speaker 1: contains potentially deadly UV radiation UM and then perhaps most

410
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Speaker 1: dawning of all, this would be a barren landscape and

411
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Speaker 1: environment impoverished of chemical nutrition. Where do you get your

412
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Speaker 1: nutrition and food from? If you decide to go live

413
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Speaker 1: up on the land, the land is dry, devoid, sun blasted,

414
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Speaker 1: plateau of death. I think from like a you know,

415
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Speaker 1: Cambrian type period, you could think of land as being

416
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Speaker 1: like mar ers. You know, like what could live there,

417
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Speaker 1: what could live there at the time is probably limited

418
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Speaker 1: to the kinds of things we imagine possibly living on

419
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Speaker 1: Mars if there is any life on Mars, right, you know,

420
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Speaker 1: maybe like microscopic bacterial type organisms. So how did our rich,

421
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Speaker 1: modern world of plants and animals and everything else come about?

422
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Speaker 1: What did it take to turn these lifeless protrusions of

423
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Speaker 1: rocky crust into living, breathing ecosystems. It appears, especially after

424
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Speaker 1: some research in the past few years, that the answer

425
00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:36,240
Speaker 1: might well be little tiny sprigs of fungus. That is

426
00:25:36,320 --> 00:25:39,280
Speaker 1: what it took to make the land livable. Uh. So

427
00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:42,000
Speaker 1: let's back up a few years. I wanted to mention

428
00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:44,919
Speaker 1: that I was reading a twenty sixteen Scientific American article

429
00:25:45,359 --> 00:25:49,800
Speaker 1: about research postulating that the first Earth organism to take

430
00:25:49,880 --> 00:25:53,640
Speaker 1: up life on land was actually a fungus. Now, there

431
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:55,880
Speaker 1: have been some development since then, but this was back

432
00:25:55,920 --> 00:26:00,920
Speaker 1: in uh. This was a now extinct fungal organism called

433
00:26:01,240 --> 00:26:04,679
Speaker 1: Torto tubas u, and I was immediately thinking, I want

434
00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:09,680
Speaker 1: a T shirt for my neighbor Torto tubas uh. This

435
00:26:09,800 --> 00:26:12,080
Speaker 1: is based on research published in twenty sixteen and the

436
00:26:12,119 --> 00:26:16,000
Speaker 1: Botanical Journal of the Lane and Society, based on physical evidence,

437
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:19,320
Speaker 1: including samples from Libya and Chad that were four hundred

438
00:26:19,320 --> 00:26:22,440
Speaker 1: and forty to four hundred and forty five million years old,

439
00:26:23,119 --> 00:26:25,080
Speaker 1: and this again would have been a time when the

440
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:29,520
Speaker 1: land was basically barren. But these fossils contained evidence of

441
00:26:29,760 --> 00:26:34,800
Speaker 1: microscopic filaments of fungus that are normally used to leach

442
00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:38,320
Speaker 1: chemical nutrients from soil. But this would have been at

443
00:26:38,400 --> 00:26:40,720
Speaker 1: a time when there was essentially nothing else that we

444
00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:43,440
Speaker 1: know of living on the land. So what did this

445
00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:46,960
Speaker 1: have to do with us. Well, land ecosystems, of course

446
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:51,320
Speaker 1: depend on soil. Right soil is the life Plants need

447
00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:54,640
Speaker 1: nutrient rich top soil in order to thrive, and animals

448
00:26:54,720 --> 00:26:57,440
Speaker 1: need plants in order to thrive. So where did the

449
00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:01,080
Speaker 1: soil to support the evolution of land to plants come from.

450
00:27:01,680 --> 00:27:06,960
Speaker 1: Perhaps it came from early land colonizing fungus like Torto tubas,

451
00:27:07,280 --> 00:27:11,439
Speaker 1: according to a paleontologist, Martin Smith of Durham University in Britain,

452
00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:13,639
Speaker 1: he was at Cambridge when he did this research, and

453
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:17,960
Speaker 1: he's quoted in this article quote. By building up deeper, richer,

454
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:22,000
Speaker 1: more stable soils, Torto tubas would have paved the way

455
00:27:22,080 --> 00:27:26,800
Speaker 1: for larger, more complex green plants to quite literally take root,

456
00:27:27,359 --> 00:27:30,600
Speaker 1: in turn providing a food source for animals and allowing

457
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:34,760
Speaker 1: the escalation of terrestrial ecosystems. So the idea here is

458
00:27:34,800 --> 00:27:38,480
Speaker 1: the fungus is the foothold. It's what creates the opportunity

459
00:27:38,880 --> 00:27:42,800
Speaker 1: for land to be colonized by life forms evolved from

460
00:27:42,840 --> 00:27:45,639
Speaker 1: the marine life forms below. I like that the fungus

461
00:27:45,760 --> 00:27:49,560
Speaker 1: is the foothold. Another for you, right uh, And then

462
00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:52,640
Speaker 1: also featured in the same article as Smith says, quote,

463
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:56,280
Speaker 1: by the time torto tubas went extinct, the first trees

464
00:27:56,400 --> 00:28:00,080
Speaker 1: and forests had come into existence. This humble, subterranean and

465
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:04,359
Speaker 1: fungus steadfastly performed it's rotting and recycling service for some

466
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:08,520
Speaker 1: seventy million years as life on land transformed from simple,

467
00:28:08,600 --> 00:28:12,320
Speaker 1: crusty green films to a rich ecosystem that wouldn't look

468
00:28:12,320 --> 00:28:15,560
Speaker 1: out of place in a tropical greenhouse today. So you

469
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:20,120
Speaker 1: go from almost mars to you know, forests and plants,

470
00:28:20,680 --> 00:28:25,280
Speaker 1: and it's fungus like this towrto tubus that probably helped

471
00:28:25,480 --> 00:28:28,680
Speaker 1: make the soil to allow that to happen, right because

472
00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:31,760
Speaker 1: because otherwise to your point, like, it's the difference between

473
00:28:31,800 --> 00:28:36,840
Speaker 1: the rich complex and perhaps in many cases overwhelming life

474
00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:41,240
Speaker 1: beneath the waters and the desert of of the surface,

475
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:43,160
Speaker 1: and the desert might be a fine If you can

476
00:28:43,200 --> 00:28:45,160
Speaker 1: flop out there, that might be a good way to

477
00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:49,040
Speaker 1: get out of the competition for life and of course

478
00:28:49,080 --> 00:28:51,640
Speaker 1: all that death it's going on below. Then yeah, there's

479
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:54,640
Speaker 1: nothing to eat your you're you're out there away from

480
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:56,680
Speaker 1: all your food sources. You're gonna have to flop back down.

481
00:28:57,480 --> 00:28:59,800
Speaker 1: But eventually, with time you reach the point where there

482
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:03,600
Speaker 1: there is food up here, there is the foothold is there,

483
00:29:03,720 --> 00:29:07,440
Speaker 1: there is there is now a a new domain to

484
00:29:07,600 --> 00:29:11,520
Speaker 1: colonize and conquer. Right uh So about towards the tubas specifically,

485
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 1: I want to say that did it have a mushroom?

486
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:16,760
Speaker 1: Did have a fruiting body like a like a mushroom

487
00:29:16,840 --> 00:29:19,560
Speaker 1: cap that we know of. At the time this article

488
00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:21,840
Speaker 1: is published, there was not evidence of whether this fungus

489
00:29:21,920 --> 00:29:24,680
Speaker 1: produced a fruiting body like a mushroom. So, so if

490
00:29:24,720 --> 00:29:26,400
Speaker 1: you make you t shirt, I don't know if you

491
00:29:26,520 --> 00:29:30,680
Speaker 1: can righteously depict the mushroom form for towards the tubas.

492
00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:32,080
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's maybe got to be like a

493
00:29:32,120 --> 00:29:38,160
Speaker 1: little microscopic filament. But anyway, so early fungus that colonized

494
00:29:38,240 --> 00:29:42,520
Speaker 1: land was actually able to mine lifeless rocks and minerals

495
00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:46,400
Speaker 1: for some nutrients, and that's also pretty amazing, right. Uh.

496
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:49,960
Speaker 1: Generally you need to get your nutrients from other life forms,

497
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:53,240
Speaker 1: and of course fungus does decompose other life forms, like

498
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:56,680
Speaker 1: fungus helps the rot and recycling process we were just

499
00:29:56,720 --> 00:30:00,160
Speaker 1: talking about, but it can also extract some nutrients just

500
00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:04,120
Speaker 1: from the mineral crust of the earth, and using that

501
00:30:04,320 --> 00:30:08,120
Speaker 1: process can help turn lifeless top soil into something more

502
00:30:08,280 --> 00:30:10,880
Speaker 1: like the rich stuff you think of in your garden today.

503
00:30:11,280 --> 00:30:14,240
Speaker 1: But it doesn't stop there, of course. Once early land

504
00:30:14,320 --> 00:30:16,960
Speaker 1: plants like liver warts often thought to be one of

505
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:19,440
Speaker 1: the you know, earliest forms of land plants, once they

506
00:30:19,520 --> 00:30:23,160
Speaker 1: come on the scene, plants and fungi also form you know,

507
00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:27,520
Speaker 1: complex symbiotic relationships with one another. They in different ways,

508
00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 1: benefit from each other's presence. I was reading a piece

509
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:33,960
Speaker 1: about ah it was based on a CBC documentary about

510
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:37,080
Speaker 1: prehistoric fungus, and there was a quote from an associate

511
00:30:37,160 --> 00:30:40,120
Speaker 1: professor of Plants soil Interactions at the University of Leeds

512
00:30:40,200 --> 00:30:45,000
Speaker 1: named Katie Field, and she said, ultimately quote fungi helped

513
00:30:45,120 --> 00:30:49,080
Speaker 1: plants move away from being these marginal, tiny little things

514
00:30:49,240 --> 00:30:53,680
Speaker 1: on the water's edge into large forests and entire ecosystems.

515
00:30:54,120 --> 00:30:57,000
Speaker 1: So the fungi paved the way for plants to move

516
00:30:57,040 --> 00:31:00,760
Speaker 1: away from the water's edge and colonize the contents. Yeah,

517
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:05,920
Speaker 1: like these these essentially become the small scale forests in

518
00:31:06,080 --> 00:31:10,880
Speaker 1: which the Devonian animals would live things that were essentially

519
00:31:11,040 --> 00:31:14,960
Speaker 1: like like millipedes and centipedes and uh, you know, early

520
00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:17,560
Speaker 1: things like mites and so forth, like, you know, a

521
00:31:17,840 --> 00:31:20,960
Speaker 1: very small scale life. But they need an environment, they

522
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:22,800
Speaker 1: need a place to conduct their business and need things

523
00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:25,560
Speaker 1: to eat. And this was this was their jungle. Yes,

524
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:29,200
Speaker 1: another really interesting point brought to my attention by the

525
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: same CBC piece, Uh that I've never read about this before,

526
00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:36,320
Speaker 1: But this is about the role of prehistoric fungus in

527
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:40,320
Speaker 1: shaping the evolution and eventual trophic dominance of the mammals

528
00:31:40,400 --> 00:31:44,560
Speaker 1: that became our direct ancestors. Without fungus, we almost certainly

529
00:31:44,680 --> 00:31:47,720
Speaker 1: wouldn't exist in multiple ways. And here's another one of

530
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:50,560
Speaker 1: those ways. All right, So I think about the Katie

531
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:54,440
Speaker 1: extinction event. We've discussed it many times on the show. Uh,

532
00:31:54,480 --> 00:31:57,000
Speaker 1: it's the the event that killed the dinosaurs, the non

533
00:31:57,120 --> 00:31:59,880
Speaker 1: avian dinosaurs, the dinosaurs that did not become modern day

534
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 1: words died in this event. About sixty five to sixty

535
00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:06,120
Speaker 1: six million years ago, there was a great and sudden

536
00:32:06,280 --> 00:32:09,560
Speaker 1: dying of many life forms, maybe something like sevent of

537
00:32:09,640 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 1: all life on Earth when extinct. I think about eight

538
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:17,480
Speaker 1: percent of animal species disappeared. Many scientists think this was

539
00:32:17,600 --> 00:32:21,760
Speaker 1: probably mostly due to an enormous impact from space, So

540
00:32:21,920 --> 00:32:24,479
Speaker 1: there's still some disagreement about the relative role of other

541
00:32:24,520 --> 00:32:28,920
Speaker 1: things like volcanic eruptions and other factors. But the impact hypothesis,

542
00:32:29,040 --> 00:32:32,960
Speaker 1: which is the most common, most important factor that's attributed

543
00:32:33,040 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 1: these days. It states that a giant comet or asteroid

544
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:39,360
Speaker 1: at orbital speed struck the Earth in an area that

545
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:43,040
Speaker 1: is now the cheek Shulu Crater in the Yucatan Peninsula.

546
00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:46,600
Speaker 1: And this impact, of course, it kicked up stuff. It

547
00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:50,680
Speaker 1: kicked up an unbelievable amount of dust and particulate matter,

548
00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:55,120
Speaker 1: which clouded the atmosphere and blocked sunlight, possibly for months

549
00:32:55,160 --> 00:32:58,160
Speaker 1: at a time, which would kill off a huge amount

550
00:32:58,200 --> 00:33:01,440
Speaker 1: of Earth's plant life, which of course needs sunlight to survive.

551
00:33:01,520 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 1: You cut off the sunlight, the plants die, right. This is,

552
00:33:04,040 --> 00:33:08,520
Speaker 1: of course the same concept that is employed in the

553
00:33:08,640 --> 00:33:13,560
Speaker 1: concept of nuclear winter, in which a nuclear war would

554
00:33:13,640 --> 00:33:18,920
Speaker 1: send up enough material the smoke of of fire storms,

555
00:33:19,040 --> 00:33:22,360
Speaker 1: burning cities, burning forests, uh, sending all that stuff up

556
00:33:22,360 --> 00:33:27,200
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere and creating a kind of sarcophagus on

557
00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:31,320
Speaker 1: the Earth, preventing as much sunlight from reaching the Earth

558
00:33:31,560 --> 00:33:35,840
Speaker 1: yes surface, yeah, yeah, similar concepts so uh. Of course,

559
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:39,480
Speaker 1: the most direct problem with this is it would disrupt

560
00:33:39,560 --> 00:33:42,160
Speaker 1: the food chain at its source. Right. The food chain

561
00:33:42,280 --> 00:33:47,160
Speaker 1: is typically based on photosynthetic organisms that make their bodies

562
00:33:47,320 --> 00:33:50,200
Speaker 1: by using sunlight. They die without the sunlight, and then

563
00:33:50,320 --> 00:33:53,120
Speaker 1: with them dead, what can all the animals and other

564
00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:55,760
Speaker 1: things eat. So so it's going to kill things all

565
00:33:55,880 --> 00:33:59,960
Speaker 1: throughout the food chain through resource deficiency. But there's enough

566
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:03,600
Speaker 1: other thing here that is worth considering, which is the

567
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:08,279
Speaker 1: role of fungus. So a blotted sky would lead to

568
00:34:08,400 --> 00:34:13,319
Speaker 1: an Earth just covered in dead, decaying plant matter. Uh.

569
00:34:13,440 --> 00:34:16,080
Speaker 1: And again the sky is dark, so this is almost

570
00:34:16,160 --> 00:34:20,280
Speaker 1: a perfect condition for fungi to thrive. Think of Earth

571
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:24,720
Speaker 1: after the Katie impact as mold world. It's mold planet.

572
00:34:25,000 --> 00:34:28,319
Speaker 1: Maybe not literally mold, but you know, the probably mold.

573
00:34:28,320 --> 00:34:30,920
Speaker 1: I don't know, I didn't look into it. It's fungus um.

574
00:34:31,160 --> 00:34:33,480
Speaker 1: So it would be boom time for fungus, and it

575
00:34:33,520 --> 00:34:37,520
Speaker 1: would represent a threat to surviving animals which could succumb

576
00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:41,120
Speaker 1: to fungal infections in a world where fungus is all

577
00:34:41,239 --> 00:34:45,400
Speaker 1: over the place and thriving, and suddenly, in this context,

578
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:48,239
Speaker 1: in a world where for hundreds of millions of years,

579
00:34:48,360 --> 00:34:52,960
Speaker 1: the dominant animals have been reptile formed, our tiny mammalian

580
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:58,799
Speaker 1: ancestors would quite suddenly have a powerful survival advantage over reptiles.

581
00:34:59,480 --> 00:35:02,600
Speaker 1: Being warm blooded. In fact, it seems that one of

582
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:06,560
Speaker 1: the pressures driving the evolution of warm bloodedness is the

583
00:35:06,760 --> 00:35:10,600
Speaker 1: threat of infection by fungus. Like your warm body, your

584
00:35:10,719 --> 00:35:13,399
Speaker 1: dog's warm body, the warm bodies of the rats under

585
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:18,160
Speaker 1: the floorboards are in part machines for fighting parasitic infections

586
00:35:18,280 --> 00:35:22,480
Speaker 1: by fungus. To quote Arturo Casadival, a professor of public

587
00:35:22,520 --> 00:35:26,680
Speaker 1: health at Johns Hopkins University, uh quote, the reptiles are

588
00:35:26,760 --> 00:35:30,439
Speaker 1: quite susceptible to fungal diseases. But your typical mammal, which

589
00:35:30,480 --> 00:35:32,920
Speaker 1: maintains a temperature in the mid thirties or so, and

590
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:36,600
Speaker 1: I guess they'd be celsius, not fahrenheit, creates a thermal

591
00:35:36,719 --> 00:35:42,879
Speaker 1: exclusionary zone for fungi. Thus, mammals, being warm blooded, gave

592
00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:46,720
Speaker 1: them a foothold to become more successful and dominant across

593
00:35:46,840 --> 00:35:50,800
Speaker 1: multiple ecosystems during this time of doom and rot for

594
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:55,080
Speaker 1: the cold blooded kingdom of reptiles. I think that's fascinating.

595
00:35:55,200 --> 00:35:58,960
Speaker 1: Tens of millions of years before the discovery of penicillin killer,

596
00:35:59,040 --> 00:36:01,719
Speaker 1: fungus was all already offering us a leg up by

597
00:36:01,800 --> 00:36:05,480
Speaker 1: having shaped our evolution in such a way that we resist.

598
00:36:05,600 --> 00:36:08,920
Speaker 1: You know, our ancestors resisted it, and the reptiles could

599
00:36:08,960 --> 00:36:13,400
Speaker 1: not as easily resisted, thus making helping mammals become more dominant.

600
00:36:13,680 --> 00:36:16,160
Speaker 1: And just one more thing on this subject of general

601
00:36:16,280 --> 00:36:19,920
Speaker 1: prehistoric fungus. So there was a twenty nineteen study I

602
00:36:20,000 --> 00:36:22,919
Speaker 1: was looking at the chase land based fungus development even

603
00:36:23,120 --> 00:36:26,040
Speaker 1: farther back into prehistory, so we would already uh, we

604
00:36:26,120 --> 00:36:29,640
Speaker 1: had already seen evidence that the first living organisms to

605
00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:34,240
Speaker 1: UH to colonize, to fully colonize the land where probably

606
00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:37,920
Speaker 1: these little fungal organisms. There was a paper published in

607
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:41,399
Speaker 1: Nature in twenty nineteen by Lauren at All called early

608
00:36:41,480 --> 00:36:45,239
Speaker 1: Fungi from the Proterozoic era in Arctic Canada, and there

609
00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:47,279
Speaker 1: was an excellent article about this research in the New

610
00:36:47,360 --> 00:36:49,839
Speaker 1: York Times by former Stuff to Blow your Mind guest

611
00:36:49,920 --> 00:36:53,160
Speaker 1: Carl Zimmer, I recommend checking that out. It's called a

612
00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:56,360
Speaker 1: billion year old fungus may hold clues to life survival

613
00:36:56,440 --> 00:36:59,840
Speaker 1: on land. But the short version is that in twenty nineteen,

614
00:36:59,880 --> 00:37:04,280
Speaker 1: the group of researchers they published findings of fossil remains

615
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:08,920
Speaker 1: of an ancient fungus which they named Rasafirah Giraldi. And

616
00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:13,280
Speaker 1: this fungus is apparently about a billion years old, roughly

617
00:37:13,480 --> 00:37:17,319
Speaker 1: like six hundred million years older than the previous last

618
00:37:17,360 --> 00:37:20,240
Speaker 1: common ancestor of all fungus had been thought to emerge.

619
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:23,600
Speaker 1: And if this is correct, it would definitely mean that

620
00:37:23,719 --> 00:37:27,520
Speaker 1: fungi were colonizing land on their own before plants, before

621
00:37:27,680 --> 00:37:30,360
Speaker 1: anything else that we know of lived on land except

622
00:37:30,520 --> 00:37:34,240
Speaker 1: maybe some bacteria. Uh. If so, what were they eating?

623
00:37:34,680 --> 00:37:38,320
Speaker 1: Possibly bacteria, we don't know for sure. So basically zimmer

624
00:37:38,440 --> 00:37:41,359
Speaker 1: saying that we are stardust, we are golden, we are

625
00:37:41,440 --> 00:37:44,239
Speaker 1: billion year old fungi. I don't think there's a suggestion

626
00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:48,000
Speaker 1: that the fungus is an ancestor of ours, but it

627
00:37:48,239 --> 00:37:52,320
Speaker 1: is it suggested that this fungus probably played an important

628
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:55,920
Speaker 1: role in shaping the ecosystems that allowed our direct ancestors

629
00:37:56,000 --> 00:37:59,320
Speaker 1: to survive. So we are not of Zugdamoin, but we

630
00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:06,480
Speaker 1: are at least unwitting u. We're in the dead of Subtomo. Yeah, alright,

631
00:38:06,520 --> 00:38:08,320
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take one more break, but

632
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:13,080
Speaker 1: when we come back, we will return, specifically to interpretations

633
00:38:13,239 --> 00:38:19,480
Speaker 1: of prototax It s thank alright, We're back. Alright. So

634
00:38:19,560 --> 00:38:24,560
Speaker 1: we were discussing the proposal that the prototaxites fossils were

635
00:38:24,600 --> 00:38:29,840
Speaker 1: actually gigantic stalks of fungus. Uh. Not a rotting conifer

636
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:33,440
Speaker 1: tree with fungus in it, not a giant alga, but

637
00:38:33,680 --> 00:38:37,279
Speaker 1: just a huge piece of fungus, a tree sized piece

638
00:38:37,320 --> 00:38:39,960
Speaker 1: of fungus. What is the evidence for this, Well, there

639
00:38:40,080 --> 00:38:43,080
Speaker 1: was some There's been more and more evidence supporting the

640
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:47,400
Speaker 1: fungal hypothesis in the recent decades. Uh. To read a

641
00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:49,160
Speaker 1: quote from an article I was reading about this in

642
00:38:49,239 --> 00:38:53,600
Speaker 1: New Scientists from see Kevin Boyce, a geophysicist to the

643
00:38:53,719 --> 00:38:57,560
Speaker 1: University of Chicago. Quote. No matter what argument you put forth,

644
00:38:57,640 --> 00:39:00,960
Speaker 1: people say it's crazy. A six meter fungus doesn't make

645
00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:04,839
Speaker 1: any sense. But here's the fossil. Uh. And so why

646
00:39:04,920 --> 00:39:07,759
Speaker 1: does boys? Why is boys so confident that it is

647
00:39:07,880 --> 00:39:11,640
Speaker 1: a fungus? Well Voice was involved in research that attempted

648
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:15,040
Speaker 1: to look for clues to the classification of prototaxides fossils

649
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:20,000
Speaker 1: by analyzing different levels of trace carbon compounds within them.

650
00:39:20,960 --> 00:39:23,040
Speaker 1: I thought this was really interesting. Now, note that this

651
00:39:23,239 --> 00:39:26,719
Speaker 1: is not carbon dating. These fossils are far too old

652
00:39:26,880 --> 00:39:29,879
Speaker 1: to be subject to accurate carbon dating methods, and they're

653
00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:33,200
Speaker 1: not They're not trying to establish dates for them. But

654
00:39:33,360 --> 00:39:35,960
Speaker 1: it does follow some similar principles to what's done in

655
00:39:36,120 --> 00:39:39,759
Speaker 1: radiocarbon dating, which is looking at different isotopes of the

656
00:39:39,880 --> 00:39:44,520
Speaker 1: element carbon within the object, and in so in carbon dating,

657
00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:47,759
Speaker 1: these isotopes I think are usually carbon twelve and carbon fourteen.

658
00:39:48,320 --> 00:39:51,239
Speaker 1: In the research on prototaxides it was carbon twelve and

659
00:39:51,360 --> 00:39:56,080
Speaker 1: carbon thirteen, and basically the reasoning went like this, Plants

660
00:39:56,400 --> 00:40:00,399
Speaker 1: get essentially all of their carbon content from the two

661
00:40:00,560 --> 00:40:03,880
Speaker 1: in the air. Again one of my favorite facts about nature.

662
00:40:03,960 --> 00:40:08,520
Speaker 1: It's so counterintuitive. Plants make their bodies out of C

663
00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:12,480
Speaker 1: O two that they absorbed from the atmosphere using energy

664
00:40:12,560 --> 00:40:15,040
Speaker 1: acquired from sunlight to do the chemical work. But the

665
00:40:15,200 --> 00:40:18,479
Speaker 1: atoms that make up the carbon content of plants, that's

666
00:40:18,560 --> 00:40:21,319
Speaker 1: from the air. When you think about it, next time

667
00:40:21,360 --> 00:40:24,480
Speaker 1: you burn charcoal, you're burning carbon that was once the

668
00:40:24,520 --> 00:40:27,320
Speaker 1: body of a plant that was made out of gas

669
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:30,239
Speaker 1: from the air. I don't think I'll ever get over them.

670
00:40:31,239 --> 00:40:33,480
Speaker 1: I mean, it always seems like the natural thing to

671
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:36,040
Speaker 1: assume is that the matter that makes up a plant

672
00:40:36,120 --> 00:40:38,839
Speaker 1: comes up out of the ground. Uh. And I think,

673
00:40:38,880 --> 00:40:41,680
Speaker 1: you know, some small content like minerals and trace elements

674
00:40:41,719 --> 00:40:43,759
Speaker 1: and stuff like that might be absorbed through the water,

675
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:46,320
Speaker 1: of course, absorbed through the roots. But yeah, the carbon

676
00:40:46,440 --> 00:40:50,880
Speaker 1: content comes from the C O two in the air. Yeah. Uh.

677
00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:53,440
Speaker 1: And so for this reason, of course, because plants make

678
00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:56,080
Speaker 1: their make their you know, the carbon in their bodies

679
00:40:56,120 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 1: out of the air. The ratios of different carbon isotopes

680
00:40:59,120 --> 00:41:01,960
Speaker 1: found in plants or fairly predictable for plants that were

681
00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:05,040
Speaker 1: alive at the same time. It's based on the ratios

682
00:41:05,080 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 1: of carbon isotopes found in the atmosphere, But the ratios

683
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:12,920
Speaker 1: of carbon twelve and carbon thirteen found in fungus are

684
00:41:13,040 --> 00:41:16,040
Speaker 1: not always so predictable, since, like us, they get the

685
00:41:16,080 --> 00:41:19,560
Speaker 1: carbon content of their bodies from food rather than from

686
00:41:19,640 --> 00:41:23,399
Speaker 1: the air, and that food could potentially include a number

687
00:41:23,440 --> 00:41:28,360
Speaker 1: of sources producing wacky isotope ratios between carbon twelve and

688
00:41:28,440 --> 00:41:32,359
Speaker 1: carbon thirteen, And what the researchers found was that in fact,

689
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:36,440
Speaker 1: the carbon twelve to carbon thirteen levels in these prototaxites

690
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:40,719
Speaker 1: fossils were not consistent, suggesting that they are that they

691
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:43,520
Speaker 1: were not plants, that the carbon in them was coming

692
00:41:43,600 --> 00:41:46,359
Speaker 1: from somewhere other than the air, and thus that they

693
00:41:46,400 --> 00:41:48,440
Speaker 1: were less likely to be plants more likely to be

694
00:41:48,600 --> 00:41:51,160
Speaker 1: something that was making their bodies out of food that

695
00:41:51,320 --> 00:41:55,240
Speaker 1: they ate, which would include fungus. Another quote from Voice

696
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:58,520
Speaker 1: in that New Scientist article quote, a six M fungus

697
00:41:58,600 --> 00:42:00,440
Speaker 1: would be odd enough in the modern in the world,

698
00:42:00,520 --> 00:42:02,640
Speaker 1: but at least where used to trees quite a bit

699
00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:05,640
Speaker 1: bigger plants at that time, where a few feet tall.

700
00:42:06,080 --> 00:42:09,920
Speaker 1: Invertebrate animals were small, and there were no terrestrial vertebrates,

701
00:42:10,239 --> 00:42:12,920
Speaker 1: this fossil would have been all the more striking in

702
00:42:13,040 --> 00:42:16,799
Speaker 1: such a diminutive landscape, again, standing up above anything else

703
00:42:16,880 --> 00:42:18,560
Speaker 1: that would have been around. Yeah, it just would have

704
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:21,839
Speaker 1: yet dwarfed everything else. So based on what I've read,

705
00:42:21,920 --> 00:42:24,840
Speaker 1: I think I'm fairly convinced by the fungal hypothesis that

706
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:29,479
Speaker 1: this was a giant six meter twenty foot tall piece

707
00:42:29,560 --> 00:42:33,080
Speaker 1: of fungus. Yeah, and I like the idea that is

708
00:42:33,120 --> 00:42:35,279
Speaker 1: often presented to that it it would have need it

709
00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:37,880
Speaker 1: would have needed to to grow that high so as

710
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:40,880
Speaker 1: to help spread the spores, like you have a tangible

711
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:43,879
Speaker 1: reason for achieving that height. I don't know, is there

712
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:47,359
Speaker 1: a reason in the in the algae theory about why

713
00:42:48,040 --> 00:42:52,040
Speaker 1: a giant alga would need to be that tall? Is

714
00:42:52,080 --> 00:42:53,960
Speaker 1: it not that it's not tall, that they were supposed

715
00:42:53,960 --> 00:42:57,440
Speaker 1: to be horizontal or something. Um, you do see the

716
00:42:57,520 --> 00:43:01,520
Speaker 1: horizontal aspect of that brought up at times, So that's

717
00:43:01,560 --> 00:43:04,440
Speaker 1: that's certainly seems to be a possibility. But we'll get

718
00:43:04,480 --> 00:43:08,440
Speaker 1: into another horizontal theory here in a minute. Um. Now,

719
00:43:08,760 --> 00:43:12,200
Speaker 1: you know, as we mentioned earlier, that algo hypothesis has

720
00:43:12,239 --> 00:43:15,440
Speaker 1: never completely gone away. In one of the more interesting

721
00:43:15,520 --> 00:43:19,000
Speaker 1: angles on it is that um prototax i t S

722
00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:23,640
Speaker 1: might have been a composite organism arising from algae living

723
00:43:23,719 --> 00:43:27,720
Speaker 1: among fungal filaments. This is of course nothing completely alien

724
00:43:27,840 --> 00:43:32,080
Speaker 1: because we have these today, we have lichen so and

725
00:43:32,160 --> 00:43:35,799
Speaker 1: this would have been essentially a parasitic or symbiotic relationship

726
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:38,719
Speaker 1: between the the alergaye and the fungus but it would

727
00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:44,480
Speaker 1: have essentially been a giant lichen. Then now another tantalizing

728
00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:48,920
Speaker 1: theory relates to liver warts, which we mentioned are already

729
00:43:49,040 --> 00:43:52,719
Speaker 1: is being a you know, primitive form of of plant life,

730
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:56,799
Speaker 1: kind of kind of like like moss prototerrestrial plants. Yeah,

731
00:43:57,360 --> 00:44:01,560
Speaker 1: and so it's been suggested that instead of these things

732
00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:07,640
Speaker 1: being um vertical pillars, instead of being this phallic landscape

733
00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:10,920
Speaker 1: um that is that is so hauntingly depicted in some

734
00:44:11,040 --> 00:44:15,120
Speaker 1: of these instances of paleo art detailing prototax it s,

735
00:44:15,440 --> 00:44:18,680
Speaker 1: what have instead? Uh, yeah, they were just rolled up

736
00:44:18,760 --> 00:44:22,279
Speaker 1: carpets of liver warts. Now let me read a description here.

737
00:44:22,360 --> 00:44:25,560
Speaker 1: This was from a This was discussed in a two

738
00:44:25,600 --> 00:44:28,960
Speaker 1: thousand ten American Journal of Botany paper by Graham at All,

739
00:44:29,040 --> 00:44:32,000
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna read just a quote from it here. Quote.

740
00:44:32,080 --> 00:44:35,840
Speaker 1: Our comparative analyzes in instead indicated that prototax it is

741
00:44:35,920 --> 00:44:41,280
Speaker 1: formed from partially degraded wind gravity or water rolled mats

742
00:44:41,719 --> 00:44:47,600
Speaker 1: of mixo tropic liver warts having fungal and santo bacterial associates,

743
00:44:47,960 --> 00:44:52,640
Speaker 1: much like the modern liver wart genius Um marchantia. We

744
00:44:52,800 --> 00:44:56,440
Speaker 1: proposed that the fossil body is largely derived from abundant,

745
00:44:56,760 --> 00:45:03,080
Speaker 1: highly degradation resistant tubular right zoids of marcantioid liver warts

746
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:09,120
Speaker 1: intermixed with tubular microbial elements. So I know that's that

747
00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:11,520
Speaker 1: sounds like a bit much, but basically the idea here

748
00:45:12,160 --> 00:45:18,360
Speaker 1: is um imagine, AstroTurf has been laid out across the

749
00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:22,879
Speaker 1: Devonian landscape, and then the wind starts, a blowing wind

750
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:25,799
Speaker 1: or gravity or water, right, all three of these things

751
00:45:26,080 --> 00:45:31,719
Speaker 1: begins to roll the AstroTurf back up like wrestling maps. Yeah,

752
00:45:31,840 --> 00:45:36,160
Speaker 1: like wrestling mats, rolling them up into these big tubes.

753
00:45:36,320 --> 00:45:40,160
Speaker 1: Then uh, these big rolls of AstroTurf, and those big

754
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:44,080
Speaker 1: rolls of AstroTurf just set there and then eventually, you know, fossilized.

755
00:45:44,160 --> 00:45:47,200
Speaker 1: Like basically, that's the idea, except instead of it being AstroTurf,

756
00:45:47,680 --> 00:45:51,719
Speaker 1: it is the liver warts that have grown across the

757
00:45:51,800 --> 00:45:56,600
Speaker 1: surface of the planet. Now, yeah, this is okay. I

758
00:45:56,680 --> 00:45:59,120
Speaker 1: won't deny it just because it's less exciting than the

759
00:45:59,239 --> 00:46:03,279
Speaker 1: giant alerts the fungus. In a sense, it's less exciting. Yes, yeah,

760
00:46:03,360 --> 00:46:06,400
Speaker 1: it's certainly less exciting, but I would argue that it

761
00:46:06,520 --> 00:46:09,160
Speaker 1: is equally weird. It is. It is also just like

762
00:46:09,239 --> 00:46:13,160
Speaker 1: a weird idea of the landscape, like a landscape that

763
00:46:13,239 --> 00:46:15,880
Speaker 1: looks like they're just a bunch of rolled up old

764
00:46:16,239 --> 00:46:21,279
Speaker 1: carpets made out of green slime. That's that's strange. Uh.

765
00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:27,080
Speaker 1: And apparently this is not you know, apparently some commentators

766
00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:29,560
Speaker 1: have some issues with this particular theory. It's not I

767
00:46:29,600 --> 00:46:33,560
Speaker 1: don't think it's widely accepted, but it is still such

768
00:46:33,600 --> 00:46:37,400
Speaker 1: a strange idea. I can't help but but find it,

769
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:43,360
Speaker 1: you know, weirdly amusing. There was actually amused by it.

770
00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:46,520
Speaker 1: There was actually a bit of art with this study.

771
00:46:46,840 --> 00:46:49,000
Speaker 1: It's worth looking up if you can find it. And

772
00:46:49,320 --> 00:46:51,880
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's just bizarre. It's like this bright green

773
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:55,760
Speaker 1: landscape and then they're all these just rolls of moss

774
00:46:55,840 --> 00:46:59,000
Speaker 1: carpet out there, just laying around like somebody left them,

775
00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:02,279
Speaker 1: as if the god this came to install vegetation on

776
00:47:02,440 --> 00:47:05,320
Speaker 1: the earth and simply got bored or went off for

777
00:47:05,360 --> 00:47:10,560
Speaker 1: a smoke break and just left everything half finished. Uh. Now,

778
00:47:10,680 --> 00:47:13,760
Speaker 1: one last question I thought we should look at is obviously,

779
00:47:14,800 --> 00:47:17,240
Speaker 1: you know, there are no tree sized columns of fungus

780
00:47:17,440 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 1: or whatever they were today, So something happened to the

781
00:47:20,200 --> 00:47:23,800
Speaker 1: prototaxids to drive them extinct. Any idea what that might be,

782
00:47:24,680 --> 00:47:26,799
Speaker 1: I think we don't know for sure, but Huber has

783
00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:30,560
Speaker 1: suggested something the same researcher you were pointing to earlier.

784
00:47:31,120 --> 00:47:37,120
Speaker 1: Huber has suggested that actually the prototaxity suffered parasitic infestations

785
00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:41,040
Speaker 1: from recently evolved insects. Remember this, this would be also

786
00:47:41,120 --> 00:47:43,800
Speaker 1: a time when the land is being colonized by various

787
00:47:43,880 --> 00:47:48,279
Speaker 1: forms of invertebrates, and these land dwelling arthropods would dig

788
00:47:48,440 --> 00:47:52,040
Speaker 1: little holes into the stalks of prototaxids. You can apparently

789
00:47:52,080 --> 00:47:55,800
Speaker 1: see evidence of these probable insect bore holes in the

790
00:47:55,880 --> 00:47:59,680
Speaker 1: fossil remains of prototaxids today, and these might have played

791
00:47:59,760 --> 00:48:05,160
Speaker 1: some role in driving the giant fungus extinct. Again, it

792
00:48:05,239 --> 00:48:10,160
Speaker 1: comes back to the idea that the fungal world essentially,

793
00:48:10,600 --> 00:48:12,920
Speaker 1: you know, drives out into the wilderness and remakes it

794
00:48:13,000 --> 00:48:16,480
Speaker 1: into something that's habitable. But then come the new inhabitants,

795
00:48:16,600 --> 00:48:19,160
Speaker 1: and then come the inheritors of the earth, and the

796
00:48:19,280 --> 00:48:22,440
Speaker 1: inheritors generally do not treat those that came before them.

797
00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:25,920
Speaker 1: So well. So true, but of course the fungus never

798
00:48:26,040 --> 00:48:28,839
Speaker 1: really goes away, right, It just kind of goes underground

799
00:48:29,719 --> 00:48:31,080
Speaker 1: and it is true. I think we do have to

800
00:48:31,239 --> 00:48:34,200
Speaker 1: remind us, like we can get so obsessed with species

801
00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:38,040
Speaker 1: that we we forget sort of like the broader view

802
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:41,520
Speaker 1: of life itself, you know. So, yes, it's not like

803
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:44,520
Speaker 1: it's not like the day the fungus died. It's not

804
00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:48,720
Speaker 1: like the day that the fungal legions lost. No, they

805
00:48:48,760 --> 00:48:53,120
Speaker 1: continued and continue to thrive on the planet. But they

806
00:48:53,640 --> 00:48:57,440
Speaker 1: thrive where they where there is a niche for them

807
00:48:57,480 --> 00:49:01,480
Speaker 1: to occupy. They fit right in there. Sometimes there's a shroom,

808
00:49:01,680 --> 00:49:05,440
Speaker 1: sometimes there's a shroom. He's this shroom for his particular

809
00:49:05,520 --> 00:49:10,520
Speaker 1: time and place. Absolutely, so there you have it. Prototax

810
00:49:10,640 --> 00:49:12,840
Speaker 1: i t s. Obviously, this is a topic where you know,

811
00:49:12,840 --> 00:49:15,239
Speaker 1: hopefully there'll be more studies in the future that will

812
00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:19,840
Speaker 1: shed more light on this fossil mystery. Uh, this mystery fossil.

813
00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:23,839
Speaker 1: But but hopefully we we were we did a good

814
00:49:23,880 --> 00:49:26,640
Speaker 1: job here about just you know, introducing you to its world,

815
00:49:27,120 --> 00:49:31,400
Speaker 1: to its strange world. We are not done with prehistoric fungus.

816
00:49:31,440 --> 00:49:33,000
Speaker 1: I'm sure there will be more to come back to

817
00:49:33,080 --> 00:49:36,560
Speaker 1: in the future. Yes, praise zug Moy, we probably will.

818
00:49:37,040 --> 00:49:39,320
Speaker 1: Speaking of zug Moy, the the demon queen of fungus

819
00:49:39,440 --> 00:49:42,960
Speaker 1: from Dungeons and Dragons in the under Dark. In Dungeons

820
00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:47,040
Speaker 1: and Dragons, they have a particular um like tree sized

821
00:49:47,440 --> 00:49:50,880
Speaker 1: mushroom that everybody like makes at least the would substitute

822
00:49:50,960 --> 00:49:54,960
Speaker 1: for the underdark called zirkle would. So I can't help.

823
00:49:55,080 --> 00:49:58,840
Speaker 1: But since um an affinity here between zirkle would and

824
00:49:59,200 --> 00:50:02,120
Speaker 1: uh pro otex it t s uh, it seems it

825
00:50:02,160 --> 00:50:05,080
Speaker 1: seemed like basically the same concept. Well, let's hope insects

826
00:50:05,200 --> 00:50:09,000
Speaker 1: don't don't start boring holes in the under dark. Yeah. Also,

827
00:50:09,040 --> 00:50:11,200
Speaker 1: I'm not completely sure you would be able to build

828
00:50:11,400 --> 00:50:13,400
Speaker 1: a log cabin out of prototax it t s. But

829
00:50:13,680 --> 00:50:19,080
Speaker 1: but Hubert does mention a particular species of large mushroom

830
00:50:19,560 --> 00:50:23,040
Speaker 1: that that was traditionally carved into some sort of shape

831
00:50:23,719 --> 00:50:27,800
Speaker 1: by native peoples of North America. I believe. Huh. You know,

832
00:50:27,960 --> 00:50:30,600
Speaker 1: one thing, one question I didn't find the answer to

833
00:50:30,760 --> 00:50:33,160
Speaker 1: yet maybe it's out there, is how hard would this

834
00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:36,279
Speaker 1: thing have been? Yeah? I mean could you, yeah, like,

835
00:50:36,400 --> 00:50:39,000
Speaker 1: could you carve it into boards and make lumber out

836
00:50:39,040 --> 00:50:41,239
Speaker 1: of it? Or would it have been relatively soft and

837
00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:44,440
Speaker 1: easy to knock over with a good shove. Yeah, I mean,

838
00:50:44,480 --> 00:50:46,480
Speaker 1: I guess Luckily there there there aren't gonna be any

839
00:50:46,560 --> 00:50:48,799
Speaker 1: large animals that are gonna come and push you over.

840
00:50:48,960 --> 00:50:51,520
Speaker 1: It's gonna it's gonna come down to kind of like

841
00:50:51,600 --> 00:50:53,120
Speaker 1: we're talking with the Roles, It's going to be going

842
00:50:53,160 --> 00:50:55,600
Speaker 1: to come down to wind and water and gravity, and

843
00:50:55,920 --> 00:50:58,080
Speaker 1: and these things are inevitably going to fall over. They

844
00:50:58,280 --> 00:51:02,200
Speaker 1: did fall over. That's the that's how they're preserved as fossils,

845
00:51:02,400 --> 00:51:06,600
Speaker 1: horizontally and not vertically. Um, in the same way that

846
00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:11,600
Speaker 1: that our tallest and most impressive trees today will inevitably

847
00:51:11,640 --> 00:51:15,600
Speaker 1: at some point fall over and become horizontal. Um. But

848
00:51:16,080 --> 00:51:17,600
Speaker 1: but yeah, I think it comes back to what you

849
00:51:17,840 --> 00:51:19,600
Speaker 1: said to about like this being kind of the sticking

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00:51:19,640 --> 00:51:24,839
Speaker 1: point sometimes for people with the vertical fungal interpretation. People

851
00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:27,239
Speaker 1: just say, well, how could that be? How could these

852
00:51:27,320 --> 00:51:29,839
Speaker 1: things have existed, how could they have stood? How could

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00:51:29,840 --> 00:51:32,279
Speaker 1: they have grown like this? Uh? And again it just

854
00:51:32,360 --> 00:51:34,239
Speaker 1: comes back to the intriguing nature of it as well.

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00:51:34,320 --> 00:51:36,719
Speaker 1: It would it was just such an alien world and

856
00:51:36,840 --> 00:51:41,160
Speaker 1: this was the largest alien on the landscape. Does it

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00:51:41,320 --> 00:51:44,920
Speaker 1: for me? All right? Uh? In the meantime, if you

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00:51:44,960 --> 00:51:46,480
Speaker 1: want to check out other episodes of stuff to blow

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00:51:46,520 --> 00:51:48,640
Speaker 1: your mind, you know where they are there over stuff

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00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:50,719
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. They're also wherever you

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Speaker 1: get new episodes and rate interview that that really helps

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Speaker 1: us out in the long term. Huge thanks as always

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Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you

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00:52:11,120 --> 00:52:13,000
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback

869
00:52:13,080 --> 00:52:15,480
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic

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Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hello, you can email

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00:52:29,120 --> 00:52:30,960
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