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Speaker 1: The time traveler, for so it will be convenient to

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Speaker 1: speak of him. Turned his attention at last the Devonian period.

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Speaker 1: His pale gray eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually

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Speaker 1: pale face became flushed and animated. The calm of mourning

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Speaker 1: was upon. The world whirled in its greening, the spring

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Speaker 1: time of the Earth. The environment was arid and warm,

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Speaker 1: and everywhere I walked I observed forests of moss and

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

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Speaker 1: crept primitive arthropods and something that looked remarkably like a

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Speaker 1: winged insect, though I did not catch it in the

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

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Speaker 1: trees to lift a canopy above my head. For what

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: Devonian world like stylight pillars, and I observed just a

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Speaker 1: hint of spores carried away from their czaar. I wondered, then,

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Speaker 1: might these organisms to be giant mushrooms? But that's when

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Speaker 1: the more locks came at me. The more Locks, I said,

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Speaker 1: surely the more locks existed far in the future. What

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

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

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Speaker 1: 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 Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. 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 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 imagining what it might be like to

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Speaker 1: walk amid this strange, these strange h specimens, this 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 even,

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Speaker 1: and that is proto tax I t s. Yes, today

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

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

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Speaker 1: about for a long time because fungus in the fossil record.

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Speaker 1: I think there's actually a lot of interesting stuff we explore.

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Speaker 1: But the keystone of today's episode is going to be, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the fossil remains of these giant stylite organisms from hundreds

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Speaker 1: of millions of years ago that were the tallest standing

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Speaker 1: things of their time, and we don't know for sure

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Speaker 1: what they were. We have we have better ideas than

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Speaker 1: we used to, and we'll get into that as the

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Speaker 1: episode goes on. But yeah, try to imagine yourself as

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Speaker 1: a paleontologist digging into the strata from a period hundreds

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Speaker 1: of millions of years ago where there were no trees,

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Speaker 1: there's no there are no forests on the earth, but

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Speaker 1: you find these six meter high giant pillars of something

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Speaker 1: that was alive. Yeah. And you can see if you

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Speaker 1: look up the images of prototyps I t s, you'll

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Speaker 1: you'll see people posing with the fossil remnants. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: it looks like like a massive pillar or even in

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Speaker 1: the way it's broken in some of these uh, these fossils,

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Speaker 1: it looks like it could be the you know, the

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Speaker 1: neckbone of some of some enormous creature. Like there's an

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Speaker 1: enormity to the fossil uh that that makes it so irresistible.

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

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Speaker 1: It is not an animal. It is it is something else.

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Speaker 1: We don't know exactly what prototax it t S looked

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

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Speaker 1: but some of the interpretations uh and and 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 tantalized fossil then continues to be something of

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: 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 Devonian rock on the shores of

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Speaker 1: the I believe it's gossip a Bay in Quebec, in

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: but by people developing industry and heavy heavy transport and

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

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Speaker 1: like the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies were originally

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Speaker 1: found because railroad workers who were building railroads through the area.

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Speaker 1: We're finding the stone bugs everywhere, and that eventually attracted

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Speaker 1: the attention of paleontologists to come and investigate. Oh yeah,

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

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Speaker 1: which we'll get back to later. So I want to

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Speaker 1: note that one of one of my key sources on

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Speaker 1: the the the early history of this fossil find uh

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

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Speaker 1: National Museum of Natural History and Washington, d C. Who

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

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Speaker 1: Alga 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 in full, but uh,

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

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Speaker 1: renaming of things is a vital part of this fossil's

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

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Speaker 1: people to agree on what they call things, or it's

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Speaker 1: gonna be a lot harder to talk about them, and

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Speaker 1: it can come become quite a dramatic issue as well.

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Speaker 1: Unravel here. So, in eighteen fifty five, Logan's Devonian Flora

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Speaker 1: fossils passed into the hands of noted Canadian geologist John

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Speaker 1: William Dawson, who, by the way, the mineral Dawsonite is

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Speaker 1: named in his honor. He was particularly taken by a

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Speaker 1: large specimen with the with the peculiar interior structure. It

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Speaker 1: resembled a large tree, but under a microscope, it became

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Speaker 1: clear that the fossilized tissue was uh solicified, you know,

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Speaker 1: containing an entangled mesh that resembled fungal my cilia. He

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Speaker 1: even noted the mysilia resemblance himself in his writings, but

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Speaker 1: he didn't really explore it further. Uh, I mean, he

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Speaker 1: did not explore the explore the fungal angle further, but

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Speaker 1: he was very interested this fossil. He traveled to seal

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Speaker 1: Cove himself and obtained additional samples. Okay, so they've found

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: particularly my cilia. And now now my cilium is the

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

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Speaker 1: It's a mass of branching vein like hi fe that

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Speaker 1: you'll find underground or in whatever The mushroom or the

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Speaker 1: fruiting body is emerging from the mushroom itself is a

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Speaker 1: death emergence. Life is actually thriving beneath the surface, the

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Speaker 1: mushroom comes up to to release spores. Yeah, it's a

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Speaker 1: reproductive organ Yeah. Now, the way Dawson interpreted this, this uh,

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Speaker 1: this fossil was Okay, we have something that looks like

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Speaker 1: like fungus. So what we have here is probably a

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Speaker 1: rotting conifer tree, you know, an early conifer tree. It's rotting,

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Speaker 1: it's decomposing. So I'm seeing the decomposer fungus within the

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Speaker 1: decomposing uh specimen, all of this preserved in a single

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Speaker 1: fossil specimen. Well, that would make sense. It's it is

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Speaker 1: a tree trunk, it's infested with fungal Mysilia type structures, right,

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Speaker 1: And so he gave it the name proto tax I

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Speaker 1: t s or essentially, first you referring to the U

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Speaker 1: family Texas Cia, so the U tree right. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: so the the actual name is is referring to a

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Speaker 1: conifer resemblance. So he puts these eyes ideas out there,

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Speaker 1: and then, um, you know, quite as a surprise to Dawson,

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Speaker 1: a Scottish botanist by the name of William C. Carruthers

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Speaker 1: proposed a different interpretation. Uh. He said, well, this is

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Speaker 1: perhaps the fossil remains of a very large algae aquatic

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Speaker 1: or perhaps terrestrial in nature. Algae, of course, can grow

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Speaker 1: in weird places like on ice and snow. So he

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Speaker 1: declared a new name. He said, Nope, we're not going

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Speaker 1: to call this proto tax i t s. We're gonna

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Speaker 1: call this nemato ficus. Okay, but wait a minute, an

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

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

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Speaker 1: One of the things, and this is pointed out by

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Speaker 1: others that have studied, is like there's basically no non

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Speaker 1: weird explanation for this fossil. We'll get to several comments

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Speaker 1: like that later. Yeah, there's no like normal way of

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Speaker 1: looking at it. Now. Here's here's the thing about Carruthers

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Speaker 1: coming along and saying, no, this is Nemo Nemato fight.

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Speaker 1: First of all, there are rules with the naming of things,

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Speaker 1: even at the time, so you're not allowed to just

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Speaker 1: come and give it a new name. That it's an

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Speaker 1: illegitimate renaming. So so that alone is kind of weird

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Speaker 1: and and rude. But then also, according to Huber, Carruthers

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Speaker 1: was just scathing and very personal in his criticism quote

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Speaker 1: scathing and slanderous. Uh in terms of criticizing Dawson, and

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Speaker 1: it seemed to have like really caught Dawson off guard. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, based on these descriptions, one is tempted. I

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Speaker 1: don't do not know much about William C. Caruthers, but

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Speaker 1: but just based on Huber's writing, one is tempted debut

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Speaker 1: Caruthers is something of a bully in his field while

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Speaker 1: also being an extremely respected botanist. But then again, perhaps

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Speaker 1: our our our vision of this rivalry is incomplete. Well,

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Speaker 1: if that interpretation is correct, he would not be the

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Speaker 1: only legitimately good scientist who also is lacking in manners

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Speaker 1: and or another so um. According to Hubert, Dawson fought

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Speaker 1: for his initial classification, but but then later he ends

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Speaker 1: up rejecting it, apparently even trying to make it seem

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Speaker 1: as as if he never connected the fossil to conifers

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Speaker 1: at all. And then he himself, in his eight book

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Speaker 1: The Geological History of Plants illegitimately used the name nomato

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Speaker 1: ficus instead of proto taxi t s uh. So. I

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Speaker 1: imagine that at least of the time that Huber was

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Speaker 1: writing in like two thousand one. You don't do this.

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Speaker 1: You don't just like switch the name to something else

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Speaker 1: without a I don't know. I'd imagine a lot of

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Speaker 1: fields have like an international naming committee that if there

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Speaker 1: is going to be a name change, would have to

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Speaker 1: agree on it or something. Yeah, I mean it's it's

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Speaker 1: why for instance, Uh, like one's fossil that we've discussed

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Speaker 1: on the on the show before U basil Osaurus. Okay, uh,

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: But we we we don't go back and change the

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

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Speaker 1: The name prototax I t stuck and did stick despite

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Speaker 1: carruthers uh notion that we should switch to a different name.

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Speaker 1: And that name also Prototaxids is still used today but

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: nineteen when one A. H. 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 to 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 and you know it's it's reacent. It's say nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy nine and ninety 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 twenty to twenty five ft.

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Speaker 1: So you've got a giant six m high stalk 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, h It's it's a

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

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

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Speaker 1: I think that this would have been at a time

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Speaker 1: where this would have been, without question, the tallest living

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Speaker 1: thing on land. No, no trees, nothing's to it, above it.

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Speaker 1: And I'm trying to imagine the implications of that if

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Speaker 1: we were to live in this world. Because here's one

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

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Speaker 1: the first thing that pops into your head? Might very

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Speaker 1: person to person. Maybe you're not like me, but I

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: of say Arizona, which, of course and Coke comes as

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Speaker 1: a variety of different environments. But but even if you're

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Speaker 1: 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

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Speaker 1: nature itself. So what is this thing? It's almost like

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Speaker 1: you could imagine that if you were to walk around

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Speaker 1: the landscape of this period where these things were dominant,

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Speaker 1: maybe Early Devonian or whatever, this might be your idea

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: the prototaxites is. But before that, let's take a break

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Speaker 1: and 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 prototax id s, these giant pillars that used to

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Speaker 1: be by far the tallest thing on land. And there's

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Speaker 1: been this great debate about what these fossils were when

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Speaker 1: they were alive. Was it the trunk of a rotting

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Speaker 1: conifer tree that was full of, you know, fungal fibers.

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Speaker 1: Was it a giant alga or was it in fact

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Speaker 1: a fungus And now we're going to get into the

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Speaker 1: details of the fungus theory. Yeah, despite the conifer versus

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Speaker 1: algy past, for prototax it t s the most popular

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Speaker 1: hypothesis at the moment. Uh seems to be the fungus hypothesis. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Not to say they are not criticisms or questions regarding

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Speaker 1: the fungus hypothesis, but it does seem to be the

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Speaker 1: most popular interpretation. Amazing a giant, six meter tall pillar

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Speaker 1: of fungus right now. I do think it is important

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Speaker 1: to note that we are not saying giant mushroom per se,

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Speaker 1: because that brings to mind a certain image 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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00:20:19,640 --> 00:20:22,399
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 ferry sitting on top of it. Right.

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Speaker 1: But but basically the fungus interpretation comes comes down to

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

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Speaker 1: five to fifty microns across, and this would indicate not

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Speaker 1: a plant, but a fun guy, a likin, or perhaps

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Speaker 1: even an algae. Uh. You know, some of this points

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: and ultimately, uh, the the move towards the fungal interpretation quote.

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Speaker 1: In my opinion, prototaxids does not have the structural anatomy

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Speaker 1: nor morphology of an alga chemo Taxonomic analysis by Nicholas

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

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Speaker 1: fatty acids cuton and subarin differed from modern Alga, but

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

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Speaker 1: lignified supporting structures in the otherwise weak tissues. Uh And

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: affinity was still possible. The anatomy morphology and a currences

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

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Speaker 1: nine six transmission electron microscope findings from Rudolph Schmidt uh And.

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Speaker 1: This was a paper titled Septal Pores and prototax it

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Speaker 1: t s an enigmatic Devonian plant. Uh In this he

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Speaker 1: reveals 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 fung guy in the phylum

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Speaker 1: Bassidi of my Cota. He points out that the inherent

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Speaker 1: size of prototax it tes has long been a barrier

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

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Speaker 1: he counters this by pointing out that we have various

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

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Speaker 1: extensive my Silian networks. He poses that perhaps prototaxites itself

386
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Speaker 1: had a vast underground Mysilian at work as well, but

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Speaker 1: we just don't have fossil evidence of that Mysilia network.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

395
00:23:33,520 --> 00:23:36,800
Speaker 1: fans I think I could really get behind. This is like,

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Speaker 1: this is a pulse stainments dream right here. I've got

397
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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 it,

399
00:23:49,560 --> 00:23:51,560
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 that

401
00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:57,880
Speaker 1: we live in this evolutionary context land based ecosystems rather

402
00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:01,000
Speaker 1: than under the water, where we are ancestors came from

403
00:24:01,119 --> 00:24:04,399
Speaker 1: where we very well could have remained. Uh. If you

404
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Speaker 1: picture life on Earth in the Cambrian period about five

405
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Speaker 1: million years ago, peek under the surface of the water

406
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Speaker 1: and you would find lots of life. Oceans swarming with

407
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Speaker 1: strange armies of scuttling, undulating, bilaterally symmetrical animals, billions of

408
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Speaker 1: trialo bites. You've got, you know, these extinct bottom dwelling

409
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Speaker 1: animals shaped kind of like death metal roly Pulley's many

410
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Speaker 1: legged proto arthropods with hardened plates of armor on their backs.

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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

413
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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

415
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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

417
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Speaker 1: probably first evolved, with predators, possibly including the huge creature

418
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Speaker 1: called Anomala caress, and it was a time of geologically

419
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Speaker 1: rapid evolution and diversification of marine animal body forms and

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

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Speaker 1: the Cambrian period, which is known as the Ediacrian period,

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

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

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

425
00:25:23,200 --> 00:25:26,720
Speaker 1: didn't occur in an instant but on a geological time scale,

426
00:25:26,760 --> 00:25:30,440
Speaker 1: all these different animal body forms, with all this morphological diversity,

427
00:25:30,440 --> 00:25:33,120
Speaker 1: it all happens pretty rapidly. But of course it has

428
00:25:33,200 --> 00:25:35,280
Speaker 1: long been the case that we understood all this was

429
00:25:35,320 --> 00:25:38,439
Speaker 1: taking place under the water in the oceans. That was

430
00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:42,320
Speaker 1: simply where the life was back then. Uh, Like, we

431
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:44,360
Speaker 1: know from the fossil record that if you go back

432
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 1: far enough, almost all archaic life on Earth lived in

433
00:25:47,800 --> 00:25:51,680
Speaker 1: the oceans and the Precambrian world. It seems the difference

434
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:54,560
Speaker 1: between ocean and land was like the difference between a

435
00:25:54,680 --> 00:25:58,440
Speaker 1: lush forest and a lifeless desert. In order to survive

436
00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:01,000
Speaker 1: on land, an animal would have to find a way

437
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:03,760
Speaker 1: to tolerate dryness. Of course, I mean, that's a big one,

438
00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:06,720
Speaker 1: but as well as other threats, you know, direct exposure

439
00:26:06,720 --> 00:26:09,880
Speaker 1: to radiation from a star which we now know as sunlight.

440
00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:12,400
Speaker 1: Seems nice to us, but if you're not used to it,

441
00:26:12,400 --> 00:26:15,920
Speaker 1: it's probably pretty bad because it contains potentially deadly UV

442
00:26:16,240 --> 00:26:19,919
Speaker 1: radiation UM and then, perhaps most dawning of all, this

443
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:24,480
Speaker 1: would be a barren landscape and environment impoverished of chemical nutrition.

444
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:27,119
Speaker 1: Where do you get your nutrition and food from if

445
00:26:27,160 --> 00:26:29,280
Speaker 1: you decide to go live up on the land, The

446
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:34,199
Speaker 1: land is dry, devoid, sun blasted plateau of death. I

447
00:26:34,240 --> 00:26:37,359
Speaker 1: think from like a you know, Cambrian type period, you

448
00:26:37,400 --> 00:26:40,520
Speaker 1: could think of land as being like Mars, you know,

449
00:26:40,640 --> 00:26:43,639
Speaker 1: like what could live there? What could live there at

450
00:26:43,640 --> 00:26:46,200
Speaker 1: the time is probably limited to the kinds of things

451
00:26:46,240 --> 00:26:49,440
Speaker 1: we imagine possibly living on Mars, if there is any

452
00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:52,760
Speaker 1: life on Mars, right, you know, maybe like microscopic, bacterial

453
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:56,960
Speaker 1: type organisms. So how did our rich, modern world of

454
00:26:57,040 --> 00:27:00,440
Speaker 1: plants and animals and everything else come about? What did

455
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:05,000
Speaker 1: it take to turn these lifeless protrusions of rocky crust

456
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:10,640
Speaker 1: into living, breathing ecosystems. It appears, especially after some research

457
00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:12,840
Speaker 1: in the past few years, that the answer might well

458
00:27:12,880 --> 00:27:16,439
Speaker 1: be little tiny sprigs of fungus. That is what it

459
00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: took to make the land livable. Uh. So let's back

460
00:27:19,880 --> 00:27:22,080
Speaker 1: up a few years. I wanted to mention that I

461
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:26,360
Speaker 1: was reading a twenty sixteen Scientific American article about research

462
00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:30,120
Speaker 1: postulating that the first earth organism to take up life

463
00:27:30,160 --> 00:27:33,760
Speaker 1: on land was actually a fungus. Now, there have been

464
00:27:33,800 --> 00:27:37,320
Speaker 1: some development since then, but this was back in UH.

465
00:27:37,560 --> 00:27:42,000
Speaker 1: This was a now extinct fungal organism called Torto tubas.

466
00:27:42,920 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 1: And that was immediately thinking, I want a T shirt

467
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:49,960
Speaker 1: for my neighbor Torto tubas. Uh. But this is based

468
00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:52,919
Speaker 1: on research published in twenty sixteen and the Botanical Journal

469
00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:56,760
Speaker 1: of the Lenaean Society, based on physical evidence including samples

470
00:27:56,840 --> 00:27:59,600
Speaker 1: from Libya and Chad that were four hundred and forty

471
00:27:59,640 --> 00:28:03,040
Speaker 1: to four hundred and forty five million years old. And

472
00:28:03,160 --> 00:28:05,320
Speaker 1: this again would have been a time when the land

473
00:28:05,440 --> 00:28:10,600
Speaker 1: was basically barren. But these fossils contained evidence of microscopic

474
00:28:10,800 --> 00:28:15,240
Speaker 1: filaments of fungus that are normally used to leach chemical

475
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:18,280
Speaker 1: nutrients from soil. But this would have been at a

476
00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:20,720
Speaker 1: time when there was essentially nothing else that we know

477
00:28:20,800 --> 00:28:23,439
Speaker 1: of living on the land. So what did this have

478
00:28:23,560 --> 00:28:27,360
Speaker 1: to do with us. Well, land ecosystems, of course depend

479
00:28:27,480 --> 00:28:31,680
Speaker 1: on soil, right soil is the life. Plants need nutrient

480
00:28:31,800 --> 00:28:34,680
Speaker 1: rich top soil in order to thrive, and animals need

481
00:28:34,760 --> 00:28:37,800
Speaker 1: plants in order to thrive. So where did the soil

482
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:42,040
Speaker 1: to support the evolution of land plants come from? Perhaps

483
00:28:42,120 --> 00:28:47,040
Speaker 1: it came from early land colonizing fungus like torto tubus.

484
00:28:47,080 --> 00:28:51,280
Speaker 1: According to a paleontologist, Martin Smith of Durham University in Britain,

485
00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:53,480
Speaker 1: he was at Cambridge when he did this research, and

486
00:28:53,480 --> 00:28:57,800
Speaker 1: he's quoted in this article quote. By building up deeper, richer,

487
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:01,560
Speaker 1: more stable soils to to tubas would have paved the

488
00:29:01,600 --> 00:29:05,880
Speaker 1: way for larger, more complex green plants to quite literally

489
00:29:05,920 --> 00:29:09,800
Speaker 1: take root, in turn providing a food source for animals

490
00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:14,240
Speaker 1: and allowing the escalation of terrestrial ecosystems. So the idea

491
00:29:14,280 --> 00:29:17,320
Speaker 1: here is the fungus is the foothold. It's what creates

492
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:21,800
Speaker 1: the opportunity for land to be colonized by life forms

493
00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:24,959
Speaker 1: evolved from the marine life forms below. I like that

494
00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:30,040
Speaker 1: the fungus is the foothold, right uh And then also

495
00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:32,840
Speaker 1: featured in the same article as Smith says quote, by

496
00:29:32,840 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 1: the time toward a tubas wind extinct, the first trees

497
00:29:36,200 --> 00:29:40,360
Speaker 1: and forests had come into existence. This humble subterranean fungus

498
00:29:40,360 --> 00:29:44,840
Speaker 1: steadfastly performed it's rotting and recycling service for some seventy

499
00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:48,840
Speaker 1: million years, as life on land transformed from simple, crusty

500
00:29:48,920 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 1: green films to a rich ecosystem that wouldn't look out

501
00:29:52,320 --> 00:29:55,640
Speaker 1: of place in a tropical greenhouse today. So you go

502
00:29:55,800 --> 00:30:00,720
Speaker 1: from almost Mars to you know, forests and plants, and

503
00:30:00,920 --> 00:30:05,480
Speaker 1: it's fungus like this towrto tubas that probably helped make

504
00:30:05,560 --> 00:30:08,800
Speaker 1: the soil to allow that to happen, right because because

505
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:11,680
Speaker 1: otherwise to your point, like, it's the difference between the

506
00:30:11,880 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 1: rich complex and perhaps in many cases overwhelming life beneath

507
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:21,560
Speaker 1: the waters and the desert of of the surface, and

508
00:30:21,560 --> 00:30:23,320
Speaker 1: the desert might be a fine if you can flop

509
00:30:23,360 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 1: out there, that might be a good way to get

510
00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 1: out of that, the competition for life and of course

511
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:31,440
Speaker 1: all that death that's going on below. Then yeah, there's

512
00:30:31,480 --> 00:30:34,440
Speaker 1: nothing to eat your you're you're out there, away from

513
00:30:34,480 --> 00:30:36,520
Speaker 1: all your food sources. You're gonna have to flop back down.

514
00:30:37,280 --> 00:30:39,640
Speaker 1: But eventually, with time you reach the point where there

515
00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:43,440
Speaker 1: there is food up here, there is the foothold is there,

516
00:30:43,520 --> 00:30:47,280
Speaker 1: there is there is now a a new domain to

517
00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:51,360
Speaker 1: colonize and conquer, right, uh so about towards the tubas specifically,

518
00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 1: I want to say that did it have a mushroom

519
00:30:54,200 --> 00:30:56,600
Speaker 1: to have a fruiting body like a like a mushroom

520
00:30:56,640 --> 00:30:59,320
Speaker 1: cap that we know of at the time this article

521
00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:02,080
Speaker 1: is published, the not evidence of whether this fungus produced

522
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:04,600
Speaker 1: a fruiting body like a mushroom. So, so if you

523
00:31:04,640 --> 00:31:06,480
Speaker 1: make you t shirt, I don't know if you can

524
00:31:06,600 --> 00:31:10,560
Speaker 1: righteously depict the mushroom form for tord the tubis. I

525
00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:12,160
Speaker 1: don't know. It's maybe got to be like a little

526
00:31:12,160 --> 00:31:18,360
Speaker 1: microscopic filament. But anyway, so early fungus that colonized land

527
00:31:18,480 --> 00:31:22,600
Speaker 1: was actually able to mine lifeless rocks and minerals for

528
00:31:22,680 --> 00:31:27,360
Speaker 1: some nutrients. And that's also pretty amazing. Right. Generally you

529
00:31:27,400 --> 00:31:29,880
Speaker 1: need to get your nutrients from other life forms, and

530
00:31:29,920 --> 00:31:34,120
Speaker 1: of course fungus does decompose other life forms, like fungus

531
00:31:34,120 --> 00:31:37,000
Speaker 1: helps the rot and recycling process we were just talking about,

532
00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:40,400
Speaker 1: but it can also extract some nutrients just from the

533
00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:44,760
Speaker 1: mineral crust of the earth, and using that process can

534
00:31:44,800 --> 00:31:48,360
Speaker 1: help turn lifeless top soil into something more like the

535
00:31:48,480 --> 00:31:51,160
Speaker 1: rich stuff you think of in your garden today. But

536
00:31:51,280 --> 00:31:54,479
Speaker 1: it doesn't stop there, of course. Once early land plants

537
00:31:54,520 --> 00:31:56,920
Speaker 1: like liver warts often thought to be one of the

538
00:31:57,000 --> 00:31:59,480
Speaker 1: you know, earliest forms of land plants, once they come

539
00:31:59,520 --> 00:32:03,000
Speaker 1: on the scene. And plants and fungi also form you know,

540
00:32:03,120 --> 00:32:07,320
Speaker 1: complex symbiotic relationships with one another. They in different ways,

541
00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:10,760
Speaker 1: benefit from each other's presence. I was reading a piece

542
00:32:10,800 --> 00:32:13,800
Speaker 1: about a it was based on the CBC documentary about

543
00:32:13,800 --> 00:32:16,920
Speaker 1: prehistoric fungus, and there was a quote from an associate

544
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:19,960
Speaker 1: professor of Plants soil interactions at the University of Leeds

545
00:32:20,000 --> 00:32:24,840
Speaker 1: named Katie Field, and she said, ultimately, quote fungi helped

546
00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:29,000
Speaker 1: plants move away from being these marginal, tiny little things

547
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 1: on the water's edge into large forests and entire ecosystems.

548
00:32:33,920 --> 00:32:36,800
Speaker 1: So the fungi paved the way for plants to move

549
00:32:36,840 --> 00:32:40,600
Speaker 1: away from the water's edge and colonize the continents. Yeah,

550
00:32:40,800 --> 00:32:45,840
Speaker 1: like these these essentially become the small scale forests in

551
00:32:45,880 --> 00:32:50,760
Speaker 1: which the Devonian animals would live things that were essentially

552
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:54,760
Speaker 1: like like millipedes and centipedes and uh, you know, early

553
00:32:54,840 --> 00:32:57,840
Speaker 1: things like mites and so forth, like, you know, very

554
00:32:57,880 --> 00:33:00,920
Speaker 1: small scale life. But they need an environment, they need

555
00:33:00,960 --> 00:33:03,040
Speaker 1: a place to conduct their business. They need things to eat,

556
00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:07,000
Speaker 1: and this was this was their jungle. Yes, another really

557
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 1: interesting point brought to my attention by the same CBC piece,

558
00:33:10,760 --> 00:33:13,520
Speaker 1: uh that I'd never read about this before. But this

559
00:33:13,600 --> 00:33:16,880
Speaker 1: is about the role of prehistoric fungus in shaping the

560
00:33:16,960 --> 00:33:20,600
Speaker 1: evolution and eventual trophic dominance of the mammals that became

561
00:33:20,640 --> 00:33:25,360
Speaker 1: our direct ancestors. Without fungus, we almost certainly wouldn't exist

562
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:28,320
Speaker 1: in multiple ways. And here's another one of those ways.

563
00:33:28,840 --> 00:33:31,680
Speaker 1: Al Right, So think about the Katie extinction event. We've

564
00:33:31,680 --> 00:33:34,800
Speaker 1: discussed it many times on the show. Uh. It's the

565
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:37,800
Speaker 1: the event that killed the dinosaurs, the non avian dinosaurs,

566
00:33:37,800 --> 00:33:40,880
Speaker 1: the dinosaurs that did not become modern day birds died

567
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:44,040
Speaker 1: in this event about sixty five to sixty six million

568
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:46,560
Speaker 1: years ago. There was a great and sudden dying of

569
00:33:46,640 --> 00:33:49,920
Speaker 1: many life forms, maybe something like seventy of all life

570
00:33:49,920 --> 00:33:52,760
Speaker 1: on Earth when extinct. I think about eighty percent of

571
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:58,800
Speaker 1: animal species disappeared. Many scientists think this was probably mostly

572
00:33:58,920 --> 00:34:01,600
Speaker 1: due to and a nor mist impact from space, so

573
00:34:01,680 --> 00:34:04,320
Speaker 1: there's still some disagreement about the relative role of other

574
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:08,800
Speaker 1: things like volcanic eruptions and other factors. But the impact hypothesis,

575
00:34:08,840 --> 00:34:12,760
Speaker 1: which is the most common, most important factor that's attributed

576
00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:16,480
Speaker 1: these days. It states that a giant comet or asteroid

577
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:19,200
Speaker 1: at orbital speed struck the Earth in an area that

578
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:23,200
Speaker 1: is now the cheek Shulub Crater in the Yucatan Peninsula.

579
00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:26,400
Speaker 1: And this impact, of course, it kicked up stuff. It

580
00:34:26,560 --> 00:34:30,479
Speaker 1: kicked up an unbelievable amount of dust and particulate matter

581
00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:34,960
Speaker 1: which clouded the atmosphere and blocked sunlight, possibly for months

582
00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:38,000
Speaker 1: at a time, which would kill off a huge amount

583
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:41,280
Speaker 1: of Earth's plant life, which of course needs sunlight to survive.

584
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:43,840
Speaker 1: You cut off the sunlight, the plants die, right. This is,

585
00:34:43,840 --> 00:34:48,400
Speaker 1: of course the same concept that is employed in the

586
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:53,400
Speaker 1: concept of nuclear winter, in which a nuclear war would

587
00:34:53,440 --> 00:34:57,720
Speaker 1: send up enough material you know, the smoke of of

588
00:34:57,840 --> 00:35:01,719
Speaker 1: fire storms, burning cities, burning forests, uh, sending all that

589
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:04,680
Speaker 1: stuff up into the atmosphere and creating a kind of

590
00:35:05,560 --> 00:35:10,560
Speaker 1: sarcophagus on the Earth, preventing as much sunlight from reaching

591
00:35:10,719 --> 00:35:15,040
Speaker 1: the Earth yes surface, Yeah, yeah, similar concepts so uh.

592
00:35:15,160 --> 00:35:18,600
Speaker 1: Of course, the most direct problem with this is it

593
00:35:18,640 --> 00:35:21,440
Speaker 1: would disrupt the food chain at its source, right. The

594
00:35:21,440 --> 00:35:26,000
Speaker 1: food chain is typically based on photosynthetic organisms that make

595
00:35:26,080 --> 00:35:29,640
Speaker 1: their bodies by using sunlight. They die without the sunlight,

596
00:35:29,719 --> 00:35:32,640
Speaker 1: and then with them dead, what can all the animals

597
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:35,000
Speaker 1: and other things eat. So so it's going to kill

598
00:35:35,160 --> 00:35:39,120
Speaker 1: things all throughout the food chain through resource deficiency. But

599
00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:43,279
Speaker 1: there's another thing here that is worth considering, which is

600
00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:48,000
Speaker 1: the role of fungus. So a blotted sky would lead

601
00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:53,200
Speaker 1: to an earth just covered in dead, decaying plant matter. Uh,

602
00:35:53,239 --> 00:35:55,920
Speaker 1: and again the sky is dark, so this is almost

603
00:35:55,960 --> 00:36:00,520
Speaker 1: a perfect condition for fungi to thrive. Think of after

604
00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 1: the Katie impact as mold world. It's mold planet. Maybe

605
00:36:05,080 --> 00:36:08,200
Speaker 1: not literally mold, but you know, the probably mold. I

606
00:36:08,200 --> 00:36:10,759
Speaker 1: don't know, I didn't look into it. It's fungus um.

607
00:36:10,960 --> 00:36:13,319
Speaker 1: So it would be boom time for fungus, and it

608
00:36:13,320 --> 00:36:17,360
Speaker 1: would represent a threat to surviving animals which could succumb

609
00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:20,960
Speaker 1: to fungal infections in a world where fungus is all

610
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:25,239
Speaker 1: over the place and thriving, and suddenly, in this context,

611
00:36:25,560 --> 00:36:28,120
Speaker 1: in a world where for hundreds of millions of years,

612
00:36:28,160 --> 00:36:32,799
Speaker 1: the dominant animals have been reptile formed, our tiny mammalian

613
00:36:32,840 --> 00:36:38,720
Speaker 1: ancestors would quite suddenly have a powerful survival advantage over reptiles,

614
00:36:39,280 --> 00:36:42,400
Speaker 1: being warm blooded. In fact, it seems that one of

615
00:36:42,440 --> 00:36:46,480
Speaker 1: the pressures driving the evolution of warm bloodedness is the

616
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:50,439
Speaker 1: threat of infection by fungus. Like your warm body, your

617
00:36:50,520 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 1: dog's warm body, the warm bodies of the rats under

618
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:58,040
Speaker 1: the floorboards are in part machines for fighting parasitic infections

619
00:36:58,040 --> 00:37:02,280
Speaker 1: by fungus. To quote Arturo Casadival, a professor of public

620
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:06,480
Speaker 1: health at Johns Hopkins University, uh quote, the reptiles are

621
00:37:06,560 --> 00:37:10,200
Speaker 1: quite susceptible to fungal diseases. But your typical mammal, which

622
00:37:10,280 --> 00:37:12,719
Speaker 1: maintains a temperature in the mid thirties or so, and

623
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:16,360
Speaker 1: I guess they'd be celsius, not fahrenheit, creates a thermal

624
00:37:16,520 --> 00:37:22,680
Speaker 1: exclusionary zone for fungi. Thus, mammals being warm blooded gave

625
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:26,520
Speaker 1: them a foothold to become more successful and dominant across

626
00:37:26,640 --> 00:37:30,600
Speaker 1: multiple ecosystems during this time of doom and rot for

627
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:34,880
Speaker 1: the cold blooded kingdom of reptiles. And I think that's fascinating.

628
00:37:35,000 --> 00:37:38,760
Speaker 1: Tens of millions of years before the discovery of penicillin killer,

629
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:41,880
Speaker 1: fungus was already offering us a leg up by having

630
00:37:42,080 --> 00:37:45,280
Speaker 1: shaped our evolution in such a way that we resist.

631
00:37:45,400 --> 00:37:48,719
Speaker 1: You know, our ancestors resisted it, and the reptiles could

632
00:37:48,760 --> 00:37:53,160
Speaker 1: not as easily resisted, thus making helping mammals become more dominant.

633
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:55,960
Speaker 1: And just one more thing on this subject of general

634
00:37:56,080 --> 00:37:59,719
Speaker 1: prehistoric fungus. So there was a twenty nineteen study that

635
00:37:59,840 --> 00:38:02,719
Speaker 1: was again that the chase land based fungus development even

636
00:38:02,920 --> 00:38:05,840
Speaker 1: farther back into prehistory, so we would already uh, we

637
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:09,440
Speaker 1: had already seen evidence that the first living organisms to

638
00:38:09,719 --> 00:38:14,040
Speaker 1: UH to colonize, to fully colonize the land where probably

639
00:38:14,160 --> 00:38:17,719
Speaker 1: these little fungal organisms. There was a paper published in

640
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:21,160
Speaker 1: Nature in twenty nineteen by Lauren at All called early

641
00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:25,040
Speaker 1: Fungi from the Proterozoic era in Arctic Canada, and there

642
00:38:25,120 --> 00:38:27,080
Speaker 1: was an excellent article about this research in The New

643
00:38:27,160 --> 00:38:29,640
Speaker 1: York Times by former Stuff to blow your mind guest

644
00:38:29,719 --> 00:38:32,920
Speaker 1: Carl zimmer I recommend checking that out. It's called a

645
00:38:33,080 --> 00:38:36,160
Speaker 1: billion year old fungus may hold clues to life survival

646
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:39,640
Speaker 1: on land. But the short version is that in twenty nineteen,

647
00:38:39,719 --> 00:38:44,080
Speaker 1: this group of researchers they published findings of fossil remains

648
00:38:44,120 --> 00:38:48,719
Speaker 1: of an ancient fungus which they named Orasafirah Giraldi. And

649
00:38:48,920 --> 00:38:53,080
Speaker 1: this fungus is apparently about a billion years old, roughly

650
00:38:53,280 --> 00:38:57,120
Speaker 1: like six hundred million years older than the previous last

651
00:38:57,160 --> 00:38:59,680
Speaker 1: common ancestor of all fungus had been thought to him

652
00:38:59,760 --> 00:39:03,279
Speaker 1: or And if this is correct, it would definitely mean

653
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:06,720
Speaker 1: that fungi were colonizing land on their own before plants,

654
00:39:07,040 --> 00:39:09,759
Speaker 1: before anything else that we know of lived on land

655
00:39:09,800 --> 00:39:14,040
Speaker 1: except maybe some bacteria. Uh. If so, what were they eating?

656
00:39:14,480 --> 00:39:18,200
Speaker 1: Possibly bacteria, we don't know for sure. So basically, Zimmer's

657
00:39:18,239 --> 00:39:21,120
Speaker 1: saying that we are stardust, we are golden, we are

658
00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:24,040
Speaker 1: billion year old fungi. I don't think there's a suggestion

659
00:39:24,280 --> 00:39:27,800
Speaker 1: that the fungus is an ancestor of ours, but it

660
00:39:28,040 --> 00:39:32,120
Speaker 1: is it suggested that this fungus probably played an important

661
00:39:32,200 --> 00:39:35,719
Speaker 1: role in shaping the ecosystems that allowed our direct ancestors

662
00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:39,120
Speaker 1: to survive. So we are not of zugdomoy, but we

663
00:39:39,239 --> 00:39:46,799
Speaker 1: are at least unwitting of sutomot. Yeah. Alright, on that note,

664
00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:48,440
Speaker 1: we're going to take one more break, but when we

665
00:39:48,520 --> 00:39:53,759
Speaker 1: come back, we will return, specifically to interpretations of prototax

666
00:39:53,880 --> 00:40:00,520
Speaker 1: It sank alright, We're back, alright. So we were discussed saying, uh,

667
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:06,560
Speaker 1: the proposal that the Prototaxites fossils were actually gigantic stalks

668
00:40:06,719 --> 00:40:10,560
Speaker 1: of fungus. Uh. Not a rotting conifer tree with fungus

669
00:40:10,680 --> 00:40:14,280
Speaker 1: in it, Not a giant alga, but just a huge

670
00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:18,360
Speaker 1: piece of fungus, a tree sized piece of fungus. What

671
00:40:18,560 --> 00:40:20,839
Speaker 1: is the evidence for this? Well, there was some. There's

672
00:40:20,880 --> 00:40:24,360
Speaker 1: been more and more evidence supporting the fungal hypothesis in

673
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:27,640
Speaker 1: the recent decades. Uh. Uh. To read a quote from

674
00:40:27,640 --> 00:40:29,799
Speaker 1: an article I was reading about this in New Scientists

675
00:40:30,080 --> 00:40:34,040
Speaker 1: from see Kevin Boyce, a geophysicist at the University of

676
00:40:34,160 --> 00:40:37,680
Speaker 1: Chicago quote. No matter what argument you put forth, people

677
00:40:37,719 --> 00:40:41,360
Speaker 1: say it's crazy. A six meter fungus doesn't make any sense.

678
00:40:41,480 --> 00:40:45,240
Speaker 1: But here's the fossil. Uh. And so why does boys?

679
00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:48,480
Speaker 1: Why is boys so confident that it is a fungus? Well,

680
00:40:49,120 --> 00:40:51,840
Speaker 1: voice was involved in research that attempted to look for

681
00:40:52,000 --> 00:40:56,440
Speaker 1: clues to the classification of prototaxites fossils by analyzing different

682
00:40:56,560 --> 00:41:01,200
Speaker 1: levels of trace carbon compounds within them. I thought this

683
00:41:01,320 --> 00:41:04,280
Speaker 1: was really interesting. Now, note that this is not carbon dating.

684
00:41:04,840 --> 00:41:07,440
Speaker 1: These fossils are far too old to be subject to

685
00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:10,680
Speaker 1: accurate carbon dating methods, and they're not they're not trying

686
00:41:10,719 --> 00:41:13,920
Speaker 1: to establish dates for them. But it does follow some

687
00:41:14,080 --> 00:41:17,400
Speaker 1: similar principles to what's done in radiocarbon dating, which is

688
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:22,400
Speaker 1: looking at different isotopes of the element carbon within the object,

689
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:25,440
Speaker 1: and so in carbon dating, these isotopes I think are

690
00:41:25,520 --> 00:41:29,960
Speaker 1: usually carbon twelve and carbon fourteen. In the research on prototaxids,

691
00:41:30,040 --> 00:41:33,759
Speaker 1: it was carbon twelve and carbon thirteen, and basically the

692
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:37,960
Speaker 1: reasoning went like this, Plants get essentially all of their

693
00:41:38,040 --> 00:41:42,000
Speaker 1: carbon content from the CEO two in the air. Again

694
00:41:42,080 --> 00:41:45,080
Speaker 1: one of my favorite facts about nature. It's so counterintuitive.

695
00:41:45,600 --> 00:41:49,040
Speaker 1: Plants make their bodies out of c O two that

696
00:41:49,120 --> 00:41:53,440
Speaker 1: they absorb from the atmosphere using energy acquired from sunlight

697
00:41:53,520 --> 00:41:55,839
Speaker 1: to do the chemical work. But the atoms that make

698
00:41:55,920 --> 00:41:59,080
Speaker 1: up the carbon content of plants, that's from the air.

699
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:01,920
Speaker 1: When you think about it, next time you burn charcoal,

700
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:04,800
Speaker 1: you're burning carbon that was once the body of a

701
00:42:04,920 --> 00:42:07,919
Speaker 1: plant that was made out of gas from the air.

702
00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:11,279
Speaker 1: I don't think I'll ever get over them. I mean,

703
00:42:11,760 --> 00:42:13,800
Speaker 1: it always seems like the natural thing to assume is

704
00:42:13,840 --> 00:42:16,239
Speaker 1: that the matter that makes up a plant comes up

705
00:42:16,280 --> 00:42:18,840
Speaker 1: out of the ground. Uh. And I think you know,

706
00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:21,920
Speaker 1: some small content like minerals and trace elements and stuff

707
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:24,080
Speaker 1: like that might be absorbed through the water, of course,

708
00:42:24,120 --> 00:42:27,239
Speaker 1: absorbed through the roots. But yeah, the carbon content comes

709
00:42:27,320 --> 00:42:30,680
Speaker 1: from the c O two in the air. Yeah. Uh.

710
00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:33,239
Speaker 1: And so for this reason, of course, because plants make

711
00:42:33,320 --> 00:42:35,840
Speaker 1: their make their you know, the carbon in their bodies

712
00:42:35,920 --> 00:42:38,880
Speaker 1: out of the air, the ratios of different carbon isotopes

713
00:42:38,920 --> 00:42:41,759
Speaker 1: found in plants are fairly predictable for plants that were

714
00:42:41,800 --> 00:42:44,840
Speaker 1: alive at the same time. It's based on the ratios

715
00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:48,440
Speaker 1: of carbon isotopes found in the atmosphere. But the ratios

716
00:42:48,440 --> 00:42:52,719
Speaker 1: of carbon twelve and carbon thirteen found in fungus are

717
00:42:52,840 --> 00:42:55,840
Speaker 1: not always so predictable, since, like us, they get the

718
00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:59,319
Speaker 1: carbon content of their bodies from food rather than from

719
00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:03,200
Speaker 1: the air, and that food could potentially include a number

720
00:43:03,239 --> 00:43:08,160
Speaker 1: of sources, producing wacky isotope ratios between carbon twelve and

721
00:43:08,239 --> 00:43:12,160
Speaker 1: carbon thirteen. And what the researchers found was that in fact,

722
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:16,240
Speaker 1: the carbon twelve to carbon thirteen levels in these prototaxites

723
00:43:16,239 --> 00:43:20,520
Speaker 1: fossils were not consistent, suggesting that they are that they

724
00:43:20,560 --> 00:43:23,319
Speaker 1: were not plants, that the carbon in them was coming

725
00:43:23,400 --> 00:43:26,160
Speaker 1: from somewhere other than the air, and thus that they

726
00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:28,239
Speaker 1: were less likely to be plants more likely to be

727
00:43:28,360 --> 00:43:30,960
Speaker 1: something that was making their bodies out of food that

728
00:43:31,120 --> 00:43:35,040
Speaker 1: they ate, which would include fungus. Another quote from Voice

729
00:43:35,120 --> 00:43:38,320
Speaker 1: in that New Scientist article quote, a six meter fungus

730
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:40,520
Speaker 1: would be odd enough in the modern world, but at

731
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:43,600
Speaker 1: least where used to tree is quite a bit bigger plants.

732
00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:46,960
Speaker 1: At that time where a few feet tall invertebrate animals

733
00:43:47,040 --> 00:43:50,640
Speaker 1: were small, and there were no terrestrial vertebrates, this fossil

734
00:43:50,719 --> 00:43:53,080
Speaker 1: would have been all the more striking in such a

735
00:43:53,160 --> 00:43:56,719
Speaker 1: dominion of landscape, again, standing up above anything else that

736
00:43:56,800 --> 00:43:59,160
Speaker 1: would have been around it. It just would have dwarfed

737
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:02,000
Speaker 1: everything else. So, based on what I've read, I think

738
00:44:02,040 --> 00:44:05,160
Speaker 1: I'm fairly convinced by the fungal hypothesis that this was

739
00:44:05,360 --> 00:44:10,919
Speaker 1: a giant six meter twenty foot tall piece of fungus. Yeah,

740
00:44:11,040 --> 00:44:13,600
Speaker 1: and I like the idea that is often presented to

741
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:15,720
Speaker 1: that it it would have need. It would have needed

742
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:18,360
Speaker 1: to to grow that high so as to help spread

743
00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:22,160
Speaker 1: the spores. Like you have a tangible reason for achieving

744
00:44:22,239 --> 00:44:25,000
Speaker 1: that height. I don't. Is there a reason in the

745
00:44:25,120 --> 00:44:29,600
Speaker 1: in the algae theory about why a giant alga would

746
00:44:29,680 --> 00:44:32,560
Speaker 1: need to be that tall? Is it not that it's

747
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:35,440
Speaker 1: not tall, that they were supposed to be horizontal or something? Um,

748
00:44:36,480 --> 00:44:39,799
Speaker 1: you do see the horizontal aspect of that brought up

749
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:43,200
Speaker 1: at times. So that's that's certainly seems to be a possibility.

750
00:44:43,800 --> 00:44:48,239
Speaker 1: But we'll get into another horizontal theory here in a minute. Um. Now,

751
00:44:48,560 --> 00:44:52,000
Speaker 1: you know, as we mentioned earlier, that algae hypothesis has

752
00:44:52,040 --> 00:44:55,239
Speaker 1: never completely gone away. In one of the more interesting

753
00:44:55,320 --> 00:44:58,800
Speaker 1: angles on it is that um prototax i t s

754
00:44:59,160 --> 00:45:03,000
Speaker 1: might have been a comple positive organism arising from algae

755
00:45:03,120 --> 00:45:07,120
Speaker 1: living among fungal filaments. This is of course nothing completely

756
00:45:07,160 --> 00:45:11,360
Speaker 1: alien because we have these today, we have lichen so

757
00:45:11,840 --> 00:45:14,920
Speaker 1: and this would have been essentially a parasitic or symbiotic

758
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:18,239
Speaker 1: relationship between the the algae and the fungus. But it

759
00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:23,280
Speaker 1: would have essentially been a giant lichen. Then. Now, another

760
00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:28,080
Speaker 1: tantalizing theory relates to liver warts, which we mentioned are

761
00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:31,719
Speaker 1: already is being a you know, primitive form of of

762
00:45:31,880 --> 00:45:36,600
Speaker 1: plant life, kind of kind of like like moss prototerrestrial plants. Yeah,

763
00:45:37,160 --> 00:45:41,360
Speaker 1: and so it's been suggested that instead of these things

764
00:45:42,200 --> 00:45:47,440
Speaker 1: being um, vertical pillars, instead of being this phallic landscape

765
00:45:47,719 --> 00:45:50,560
Speaker 1: um that is uh that is so hauntingly depicted in

766
00:45:50,680 --> 00:45:54,600
Speaker 1: some of these instances of paleo art detailing prototax it

767
00:45:54,680 --> 00:45:57,719
Speaker 1: t s would have instead. Uh yeah, they were just

768
00:45:58,000 --> 00:46:01,279
Speaker 1: rolled up carpets of liver warts. Now let me read

769
00:46:01,320 --> 00:46:04,960
Speaker 1: a description here. This was from a This was discussed

770
00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:07,760
Speaker 1: in a two thousand ten American Journal of Botany paper

771
00:46:07,840 --> 00:46:10,120
Speaker 1: by Graham at All, and I'm gonna read just a

772
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:13,840
Speaker 1: quote from it here. Quote. Our comparative analyzes in instead

773
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:19,480
Speaker 1: indicate that prototaxidy's formed from partially degraded wind, gravity, or

774
00:46:19,680 --> 00:46:24,640
Speaker 1: water rolled mats of mixo tropic liver wards having fungal

775
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:29,560
Speaker 1: and santo bacterial associates, much like the modern liver wart

776
00:46:29,760 --> 00:46:34,400
Speaker 1: genius um marchantia. We proposed that the fossil body is

777
00:46:34,520 --> 00:46:40,960
Speaker 1: largely derived from abundant, highly degradation resistant tubular rhizoids of

778
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:48,040
Speaker 1: marcantioid liver wards intermixed with tubular microbial elements. So, uh,

779
00:46:48,320 --> 00:46:50,000
Speaker 1: I know that's that sounds like a bit much, But

780
00:46:50,080 --> 00:46:55,520
Speaker 1: basically the idea here is um imagine AstroTurf has been

781
00:46:55,600 --> 00:47:01,359
Speaker 1: laid out um across the Devonian landscape. Then the wind

782
00:47:01,480 --> 00:47:04,799
Speaker 1: starts a blowing wind or gravity or water, right, all

783
00:47:04,880 --> 00:47:09,080
Speaker 1: three of these things begins to roll the the AstroTurf

784
00:47:09,239 --> 00:47:13,640
Speaker 1: back up like wrestling maps. Yeah, like wrestling. Pat's rolling

785
00:47:13,680 --> 00:47:17,319
Speaker 1: them up into these big tubes. Then uh, these big

786
00:47:17,600 --> 00:47:21,000
Speaker 1: rolls of AstroTurf, and those big rolls of AstroTurf just

787
00:47:21,080 --> 00:47:24,440
Speaker 1: set there and then eventually you know, fossilized. Like basically,

788
00:47:24,520 --> 00:47:27,520
Speaker 1: that's the idea, except instead of it being AstroTurf, it

789
00:47:27,840 --> 00:47:31,960
Speaker 1: is the liver warts that have grown across the surface

790
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:36,760
Speaker 1: of the planet. Now, yeah, this is okay. I won't

791
00:47:36,800 --> 00:47:39,360
Speaker 1: deny it just because it's less exciting than the giant

792
00:47:39,680 --> 00:47:43,080
Speaker 1: pillars of fungus. In a sense, it's less exciting. Yes, yeah,

793
00:47:43,160 --> 00:47:46,160
Speaker 1: it's certainly less exciting, but I would argue that it

794
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:49,640
Speaker 1: is equally weird. It is also just like a weird

795
00:47:49,840 --> 00:47:53,279
Speaker 1: idea of the landscape, but like a landscape that looks

796
00:47:53,400 --> 00:47:56,520
Speaker 1: like they're just a bunch of rolled up old carpets

797
00:47:56,640 --> 00:48:01,239
Speaker 1: made out of green slime. That's that's strange. Uh. And

798
00:48:01,680 --> 00:48:06,880
Speaker 1: apparently this is not you know, apparently some uh commentators

799
00:48:06,920 --> 00:48:09,360
Speaker 1: have some issues with this particular theory. It's not I

800
00:48:09,400 --> 00:48:13,359
Speaker 1: don't think it's widely accepted, but it is still such

801
00:48:13,400 --> 00:48:17,160
Speaker 1: a strange idea. I can't help but but find it,

802
00:48:18,239 --> 00:48:22,360
Speaker 1: you know, weirdly amusing. There was actually aged to be

803
00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:25,480
Speaker 1: amused by it. There was actually a bit of art

804
00:48:25,600 --> 00:48:27,880
Speaker 1: with this study. It's worth looking up if you can

805
00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:30,600
Speaker 1: find it. And it's yeah, it's just bizarre. It's like

806
00:48:30,680 --> 00:48:34,040
Speaker 1: this bright green landscape and then they're all these just

807
00:48:34,360 --> 00:48:37,880
Speaker 1: rolls of moss carpet out there, just laying around like

808
00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:40,800
Speaker 1: somebody left them, as if the gods came to install

809
00:48:40,960 --> 00:48:44,839
Speaker 1: vegetation on the earth and simply got bored or went

810
00:48:44,880 --> 00:48:50,359
Speaker 1: off for a smoke break and just left everything half finished. Now,

811
00:48:50,480 --> 00:48:53,560
Speaker 1: one last question I thought we should look at is obviously,

812
00:48:54,600 --> 00:48:57,040
Speaker 1: you know, there are no tree sized columns of fungus

813
00:48:57,239 --> 00:49:00,960
Speaker 1: or whatever they were today, So something happened to prototaxids

814
00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:03,600
Speaker 1: to drive them extinct. Any idea what that might be?

815
00:49:04,480 --> 00:49:06,600
Speaker 1: I think we don't know for sure, but Huber has

816
00:49:06,680 --> 00:49:10,360
Speaker 1: suggested something the same researcher you were pointing to earlier.

817
00:49:10,920 --> 00:49:16,920
Speaker 1: Huber has suggested that actually the prototaxity suffered parasitic infestations

818
00:49:17,080 --> 00:49:20,960
Speaker 1: from recently evolved insects. Remember this would be also a

819
00:49:21,080 --> 00:49:24,000
Speaker 1: time when the land is being colonized by various forms

820
00:49:24,040 --> 00:49:28,520
Speaker 1: of invertebrates, and these land dwelling arthropods would dig little

821
00:49:28,640 --> 00:49:32,080
Speaker 1: holes into the stalks of prototaxids. You can apparently see

822
00:49:32,160 --> 00:49:36,120
Speaker 1: evidence of these probable insect bore holes in the fossil

823
00:49:36,239 --> 00:49:39,600
Speaker 1: remains of prototaxids today, and these might have played some

824
00:49:39,840 --> 00:49:45,200
Speaker 1: role in driving the giant fungus extinct. Again, it comes

825
00:49:45,239 --> 00:49:50,560
Speaker 1: back to the idea that the fungal world essentially, you know,

826
00:49:50,719 --> 00:49:53,239
Speaker 1: drives out into the wilderness and remakes it into something

827
00:49:53,320 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 1: that's habitable. But then come the new inhabitants, and then

828
00:49:56,680 --> 00:50:00,160
Speaker 1: come the inheritors of the earth, and the inheritors only

829
00:50:00,239 --> 00:50:03,120
Speaker 1: do not treat those that came before them. So well,

830
00:50:03,560 --> 00:50:07,000
Speaker 1: so true, but of course the fungus never really goes away, right,

831
00:50:07,080 --> 00:50:10,120
Speaker 1: It just kind of goes underground. And it is true.

832
00:50:10,120 --> 00:50:11,920
Speaker 1: I think we do have to remind us, like we

833
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:16,280
Speaker 1: can get so obsessed with species that we we forget

834
00:50:16,400 --> 00:50:20,879
Speaker 1: sort of like the broader view of life itself, you know. So, yes,

835
00:50:20,960 --> 00:50:23,960
Speaker 1: it's not like it's not like the day the fungus died.

836
00:50:24,080 --> 00:50:28,040
Speaker 1: It's not like the day that the fungal legions lost. No,

837
00:50:28,239 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 1: they continued and continue to thrive on the planet. But

838
00:50:32,760 --> 00:50:36,520
Speaker 1: they they thrive where they where, where there is a

839
00:50:36,640 --> 00:50:39,279
Speaker 1: niche for them to occupy, they fit right in there.

840
00:50:40,040 --> 00:50:43,680
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's a shroom. Sometimes there's a shroom. He's this

841
00:50:43,719 --> 00:50:49,040
Speaker 1: shroom for his particular time and place. Absolutely, So there

842
00:50:49,080 --> 00:50:51,920
Speaker 1: you have it. Prototax I t s. Obviously this is

843
00:50:51,960 --> 00:50:53,920
Speaker 1: a topic where, you know, hopefully they'll be more studies

844
00:50:54,200 --> 00:50:56,560
Speaker 1: in the future that will shed more light on this

845
00:50:56,840 --> 00:51:02,160
Speaker 1: fossil mystery. Uh, this mystery fossil. But uh, but hopefully

846
00:51:02,200 --> 00:51:04,200
Speaker 1: we we were we did a good job here about

847
00:51:04,239 --> 00:51:07,279
Speaker 1: just you know, introducing you to its world, to its

848
00:51:07,600 --> 00:51:11,399
Speaker 1: strange world. We are not done with prehistoric fungus. I'm

849
00:51:11,440 --> 00:51:12,920
Speaker 1: sure there will be more to come back to in

850
00:51:12,960 --> 00:51:17,239
Speaker 1: the future. Yes, praise Zugmoy, we probably will. Speaking of

851
00:51:17,320 --> 00:51:20,160
Speaker 1: zug Mooy, the demon queen of fungus from Dungeons and

852
00:51:20,239 --> 00:51:23,400
Speaker 1: Dragons in the under Dark. In Dungeons and Dragons, they

853
00:51:23,440 --> 00:51:28,680
Speaker 1: have a particular um like tree sized mushroom that everybody

854
00:51:28,840 --> 00:51:32,160
Speaker 1: like makes it would substitute for the under dark, called

855
00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:36,400
Speaker 1: zirkle would. So I can't help. But since um an

856
00:51:36,440 --> 00:51:41,160
Speaker 1: affinity here between zirkle would and uh prototax it s uh,

857
00:51:41,280 --> 00:51:43,920
Speaker 1: it seems it seems like basically the same concept. Well,

858
00:51:43,960 --> 00:51:47,480
Speaker 1: let's hope insects don't don't start boring holes in the

859
00:51:47,600 --> 00:51:50,000
Speaker 1: under dark. Yeah. Also, I'm not completely sure you would

860
00:51:50,040 --> 00:51:52,640
Speaker 1: be able to build a log cabin out of prototax

861
00:51:52,760 --> 00:51:56,319
Speaker 1: it t s. But but Hubert does mention a particular

862
00:51:56,440 --> 00:52:01,600
Speaker 1: species of of large mushroom that that was traditionally carved

863
00:52:01,680 --> 00:52:05,600
Speaker 1: into some sort of shape by native peoples of North America.

864
00:52:05,640 --> 00:52:09,240
Speaker 1: I believe. Huh uh. You know. One thing, one question

865
00:52:09,320 --> 00:52:11,560
Speaker 1: I didn't find the answer to yet maybe it's out there,

866
00:52:11,680 --> 00:52:14,840
Speaker 1: is how hard would this thing have been? Yeah? I

867
00:52:14,920 --> 00:52:17,439
Speaker 1: mean could you, yeah, like, could you carve it into

868
00:52:17,520 --> 00:52:19,440
Speaker 1: boards and make lumber out of it? Or would it

869
00:52:19,520 --> 00:52:22,160
Speaker 1: have been relatively soft and easy to knock over with

870
00:52:22,239 --> 00:52:25,200
Speaker 1: a good shove. Yeah, I mean I guess luckily there

871
00:52:25,239 --> 00:52:27,520
Speaker 1: there there aren't gonna be any large animals that are

872
00:52:27,520 --> 00:52:29,560
Speaker 1: gonna come and push you over. It's gonna it's gonna

873
00:52:29,600 --> 00:52:31,920
Speaker 1: come down to uh kind of like we're talking with

874
00:52:31,960 --> 00:52:33,319
Speaker 1: the roles. It's going to be going to come down

875
00:52:33,320 --> 00:52:36,279
Speaker 1: to wind and water and gravity and and these things

876
00:52:36,320 --> 00:52:38,719
Speaker 1: are inevitably going to fall over. They did fall over.

877
00:52:38,840 --> 00:52:42,919
Speaker 1: That's the That's how they are preserved as fossils horizontally

878
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:46,600
Speaker 1: and not vertically um in the same way that that

879
00:52:46,840 --> 00:52:51,560
Speaker 1: are tallest and most impressive trees today will inevitably at

880
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:56,160
Speaker 1: some point fall over and become horizontal. Um. But but yeah,

881
00:52:56,280 --> 00:52:57,880
Speaker 1: I think it comes back to what he said to

882
00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:00,520
Speaker 1: about like this being kind of the sticking point sometimes

883
00:53:00,560 --> 00:53:05,200
Speaker 1: for people with the vertical fungal interpretation. People just say, well,

884
00:53:05,440 --> 00:53:07,920
Speaker 1: how could that be? How could these things have existed,

885
00:53:07,960 --> 00:53:10,200
Speaker 1: how could they have stood? How could they have grown

886
00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:12,600
Speaker 1: like this? Uh? And again it just comes back to

887
00:53:12,680 --> 00:53:14,480
Speaker 1: the intriguing nature of it as well. It would it

888
00:53:14,680 --> 00:53:17,080
Speaker 1: was just such an alien world and this was the

889
00:53:17,440 --> 00:53:21,279
Speaker 1: largest alien on the landscape. That does her for me,

890
00:53:22,640 --> 00:53:24,960
Speaker 1: all right. Uh. In the meantime, if you want to

891
00:53:25,000 --> 00:53:26,680
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,

892
00:53:26,960 --> 00:53:28,520
Speaker 1: you know where they are there over at stuff to

893
00:53:28,520 --> 00:53:30,719
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. They're also wherever you get

894
00:53:30,760 --> 00:53:33,080
Speaker 1: your podcasts. There are a million places to get a

895
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896
00:53:36,600 --> 00:53:38,080
Speaker 1: you go to get Stuff to Blow your Mind, and

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898
00:53:40,680 --> 00:53:44,279
Speaker 1: new episodes and rate interview that that really helps us

899
00:53:44,320 --> 00:53:47,600
Speaker 1: out in the long term. Huge thanks as always to

900
00:53:47,680 --> 00:53:51,160
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would

901
00:53:51,160 --> 00:53:52,920
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on

902
00:53:53,000 --> 00:53:55,400
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for

903
00:53:55,440 --> 00:53:58,040
Speaker 1: the future, just to say hello. You can email us

904
00:53:58,120 --> 00:54:01,279
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905
00:54:08,920 --> 00:54:10,760
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906
00:54:10,840 --> 00:54:13,479
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907
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