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I still do not understand why prototaxites had to be three to nine meters tall. Nothing was tall back then. Plants are tall to avoid the shade of other plants. Prototaxites (probably) didn't "need" sunlight.
Spore dispersal isn't a good reason to be tall IMO.
If Prototaxites were just the stalk of a "fruiting body" of a fungus the network of mycelium must have been massive. Some prototaxites fossils show evidence of creatures/fungi colonizing them.
But we don't really know. Drives me nuts.
@futurebird new prototaxites lore just dropped (if it passes peer review)!
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.14.643340v1.full
"Prototaxites taiti was the largest organism in the Rhynie ecosystem and its anatomy was fundamentally distinct from all known extant or extinct fungi. ... We therefore conclude that ****Prototaxites was not a fungus***** (WHAT), and instead propose it is best assigned to a now entirely extinct terrestrial lineage. (OMG GIRL STOP)"
This is crazy! From what I've seen everyone hates it when someone tries to say organisms are from entirely extinct lineages. The bar for this is high. WOW.
If this makes it past peer review... which won't be soft or kind I expect, it's a big deal. I'll do my best to understand the details but I have not been happy with the idea that it was "just a big fungi" for a whole bunch of reasons.
But... I'm just in the fandom as it were.
@futurebird @astory
This could be simply a semi-symbiotic multi-species and taxii construct. It provides height, light, housing for burrowers and sapro-recycling of their crap for the fungus, security for flying/floating stuff on top, a good launching pad for spores of all sorts (fungi, vegetals), a concentration of chlorophyllian beings on top, if linked to a burrowed veins system could generate succion and liquid circulation towards the top, some sort of multispieces vascular system... etc.
@futurebird @astory I rather suspect the fact that plants are the nearest dot in their 2d graph combined with the lignin-like stuff may cause the "maybe it's actually a plant after all" hypothesis to rise from the dead. Maybe we'll see the dreadfully confusing term "stem-land-plant" used in the cladistics sense of "an entirely extinct group most closely related to land plants", (compare to stem-bird or stem-arthropod).
@futurebird @astory
well ... that's all that's known to be preserved and connected with the holotype. Wouldn't be the first time a fossil thing had lots of other features which nobody knew it had for many years. Plants in particular are the worst for this; for example, the Devonian fossil forest of Gilboa was found (in upstate NY) in the 1920s, but the crowns and foilage of its cladoxylopsid trees wasn't known for nearly 90 years.
@llewelly @futurebird @astory As it is it kind of looks like a spineless succulent, or a standing baguette
@mattmcirvin @futurebird @astory well maybe the yeast needed for the standing baguette hypothesis would have left something that would fossilize like the fungi the paper compared it to, since yeast is fungi. But on the other hand, yeast don't produce chitin, so maybe not. That said, I think a standing baguette that contained lignin-like chemicals would be quite tough, and soaking it in your coffee or your broth probably wouldn't help.
@mattmcirvin @futurebird @astory with respect to the spineless succulent hypothesis, it might be that the very few terrestrial arthropods of the time were few enough that defensive spines were not required. Alternatively, perhaps the spines were not preserved; maybe it wasn't necessary to lignify them. Note: I am assuming by "succulent" you mean something convergent with succulents, as a close relative of a modern succulent in the Rhynie chert would be almost as wild as a precambrian rabbit.
@llewelly @futurebird @astory ah but: "baguette" in French really just means "stick", so