When Fungi Stood 20 Feet Tall

For those who saw the 1959 movie Voyage To The Center Of The Earth, with the scene where the protagonists take a walk in a forest of 7-foot tall mushrooms, this will not come as a big surprise. However, scientists had been debating for over a century about the true nature of what was quite possibly the largest organism of the Devonian era. Neither a plant, nor a lichen, this fungus went extinct some 350 million years ago, most probably because of its slow growth and inability to recover from regular disturbances.

Scientists at the University of Chicago and the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., have produced new evidence to finally resolve the mysterious identity of what they regard as one of the weirdest organisms that ever lived.

Source: NewsWise