@@dingolightfoot8823 I'm kind'a curious as to *why* they formed molecules with psychodelic properties - what function did they have in the organism itself..?
One of the things I like about this channel is that the intro is quiet and not jarring. No loud music, no jumpy visuals, no adjusting the volume. Such a relief from most channels.
Agreed, that's generally true for the content. It's so a refreshingly calm and clear. No all-caps clickbaity titles, no screaming, no drama. Just us, and prehistory. Kudos!
@@braedenconti36 Problem is it takes an incredibly long time to travel between star systems, there are approximately 10 billion planets within the habitable zone that are orbiting sun-like stars in the galaxy alone which contains 100-200 billion stars. There is simply too much space between us. No doubt in my mind they exist, but its easy to tell that they are not here (unless they are secretly present and want us to destroy our own biosphere, it will only take millions of years to get biodiversity back to early 20th century levels)
For the first 4 billion years of Earth's history there was nothing but rocks and microbes. Single celled organisms and that was it. That is is 90% of Earth's history. Everything else happened in that last 10%.
why is this the only video that covers ancient giant fungus. ill bet theres so many ancient beings that we never hear about cuz its not super popular like megalodon
The Carboniferous didn't have bacteria that broke down matter, so there were just bodies and dead plants laying around not breaking down. That's the part that gets me.
@Pat Mckinnon It's really hard telling from the pov of a lay-person. Four and a half billion years is so fucking massive it's hard to conceive of. 1 million seconds is about a quarter of a year, while 1 billion seconds is 31 years. So it could well be that most molecules of the surface have interacted with each other by this point, but I admit my ignorance. I've never been all that good at/into math.
this made me see the world from a new perspective and i just realized that trees are really weird, and the fact that we use them for "wood" is even weirder. we take a living thing and use the biological material it's composed of to build stuff. when you see a plank you normally just accept that that's what wood looks like, but you never think about the fact that the reason behind the texture, the sort of wavy patterns and the round dots that used to be twigs are all because of the fact that every piece of wood used to be the body of a living organism that grows, reproduces, needs sustenance and "breathes". imagine an alien planet where instead of trees they have fungi like in the video, and you just see the walls of the alien houses being made of mushy fungi with a trypophobia-inducing texture with pores and everything, it would be wild.
Prolly bc mushrooms are just weird. They look weird, and they do weird things. If you eat a mushroom, it's a coin flip between having a nutritious meal, dying a horrible, painful death, or tripping balls and meeting god
The idea of being on earth 400 million years ago, when most of the land was still barren and devoid of life, is so profoundly lonely and bizarre. Most of the land would be barren desert, and the few areas with life would look like empty featureless grasslands. No land animals to walk alongside larger than small insects. Then you come across these huge towering monoliths that just don't fit in with the otherwise empty landscape. Completely alien yet so similar and directly related to our current world.
Probably an evolutionary/wisdom gained and passed down intelligence. We evolved in trees and climbing them so it makes sense why they give that feeling of security while mushrooms like the other guy stated is a 50/50 chance on dying so it could be that we evolved or passed down intelligence to stay away from certain organisms while learning to lvoe others.
I subscribe to a number of channels in this genre, but I believe yours is the best in presenting information in an easily digestible format, perfectly paced and memorable. Thank you.
I watched so many pbs or other government funded programs about this ancient fungi. But this is by far the best video on the ancient fungi that I have seen
the first human prototype smirthasoid lived at this time the early anticedent to the dennisovans so its a partial possibility in the minds of dennisovan fantasy
@@nahum3557 true thats why i see Dennisovan fantasy, you cant preclude or conclude that they didnt or neanderthals didnt have refletion or imagination... or even culture for that matter. Who knows what they did or whether there where smirthasoids... 80% of species were wiped out at one point so its easy to imagine there blue smirth like creatures... but thats beside the point... these can all be Dennisovian imaginings we never got to understand because , there special thoughts were never placed onto paper. We dont know what Neanderthals and Dennisovans spoke about around the inter war campfire.
stuff like this makes me wish i could travel back in time without having to worry about the butterfly effect. id love to be able to see stuff like these gigantic tree-fungi in person
I doubt they would be toxic since there wouldn't be large animals to eat them. That said, they probably were as rigid as wood or similar (to maintain the rigid shape), so maybe?
There are water molds, and there was a mishroom found underwater in oregon or washington a few years ago. Im not sure if the underwater mushroom was a new species, or a fluke in habitat.
I imagine its large size relative to modern fungi, aside from a lack of predators, also has to do the lack of tall plants. The video touched on this absence in terms of competition for sunlight if the fungus had a symbiotic relationship with photosynthesizing organisms, but pressure to grow large in a world of stout plants could have also come from the benefits of being tall enough to disperse spores over the heads of surrounding flora. Once vascularity opened the way for the evolution of tall plants like trees, the costs in energy and resources to outgrow them began to outweigh the benefits, so fungi turned to different strategies. For one, many small fruiting bodies between the tall plants became more cost-effective, but trees also provided a new opportunity for parasitization that allowed fruiting bodies to grow on their trunks and branches; essentially outsourcing the work of growing tall to the fungi's hosts while still reaping the remaining benefits height imbued.
And then there's the so-called "Schunnemunk Tree" that Landing and Retallack seem to hypothesize had some kind of a branching structure on top of it, which - if true - could add to the photosynthesis hypothesis. And that was a very wonderful video. Prototaxies have fascinated me since I first heard of them - partly because there's fossil evidence of them being found in my country as well so it's always interesting to imagine what my town might've looked like 300+ million years ago.
@@gedeonnunes5626 I live in the baltics. There's no fossils of anything between mid-devonian and the last ice age but there's some fragmentary finds of prototaxites as well as lots of armored fish and - from earlier eras - sea scorpions, cephalopods and bits of fossilized coral.
Ah, I was wondering where the lichen hypothesis came from, the pillar-esque ones in the video didn't seem like they'd have the necessary surface area. Even so, surface area on modern mushrooms is maximized for spore dispersal so we'll need a lot more context to know.
Your narrations have improved so much! the sound quality is better and you seem more confident I didn't even think I would be interested but you killed it.
The ones that aren't interested are the ones that need to be eradicated from existence. They're the ones that turned the world into what it is today. Gross.
God, fungi are always so fascinating to me. Like, not plants nor animals yet somewhere in between, always so bizzare and beautiful in their own way. Not to mention extremely important for the ecosystem.
it kinda freaks me out but i have a morbid case of curiosity, which is liking horror movies and thinking about all the possibilities but not liking getting scared
@Toland Belmar Well, considering they were bark-like enough to get confused for trees, and needed to be pretty firm to be able to be so big without falling apart, I wouldn't bet money on them being especially tasty. Besides, no mushroom will ever come close to the Karljohansvamp (Boletus edulis) in terms of deliciousness!
@@blondbraid7986 Nah I think not, they didnt have branches and their roots were likely extremely long, so they dont really need to be that firm. They were probably firmer than today's mushrooms but still really soft compared to trees i would say (also, the substances that make trees so rough only started being used millions of years later). Man having a farm of these rhings would be awesome.
You should be. The fesr comes from deep inside, because were not the top of the food chain on earth. Mushrooms are. We are turned into mushroom food at the end of our lives.
@Rhett Mclaughlins Chin What if... what if hallucigenic shrooms are the fungi kingdom's way of enslaving us? I suddenly remembered that shroom from X-files, like on of the few non-alien villains.
Multicellular structure is an event that happened several times. Single celled algae evolved first into colonial algae before they differentiated into tissues. Animals seemed to have developed from a single-celled protista similar to Choanoflagalates which in turn are similar to sponges, an animal that lacks tissues. There are single celled fungi and fungi-like protists. All excellent examples of convergent evolution.
@@davedevosbaarle I don't know if I can post links here, but this would take you to the current phylogeny of protists as understood using molecular (DNA) analysis. You can see where plants, fungi, and animals all connect. courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-wmopen-biology2/chapter/groups-of-protists/
Each connecting branch represents a common ancestor. Since all these branches occur in the protists, one would expect them all to be single celled. Just to add, there are some multicellular Brown Algae (kelp) and Red Algae, but the current hypothesis would suggest independent single celled organisms as their link in the protista.
That's wild. I really hope someone creates the simulations of how these worlds became and changed through the eras. It's so cool to hear about it, and see art about it. But to see it in full effect and how the ecosystem could have worked is also so much fun to see and understand.
I've seen pictures of these around the internet and was always interested. But TBH I was kind of just waiting for you to make a video on it. Thank you!
Fungus is so cool, it's been around so long and still has so many unknown properties that we're still studying to this day, but we've already created amazing medicine from fungus, imagine if we keep studying it.
wrong visual when talking about the hyphae you pointed to the cap of a modern mushroom. the hyphae are the underground cells that make up the mycelium.
Well the fruiting body is made out of mycelium too, just tighter and the cells are swollen more with water. Cap tissue becomes the wispy mycelium we are familiar with once you put it in some food source too.
This was incredibly interesting. Thought it was a PBS Eons video until I heard your voice! At least as impressive as any of those. Thanks for making this :)
Okay this is literally diving into my dream realm of moss covered ecosystems with giant fungus, crazy Lichen species, ferns, and weird little critters our imagination can barely think of but nature made them at one time. (Think of all the things that don't fossilize well or at all?) These fungi trees are very much like cordyceps
okay yknow what, i found you like a month ago in my algorithm and now im really into this stuff, i watch you at night or day (more night, im a night person)
Kinda disappointed that they didnt have big neat caps.
Yeah, caps are kinda a recent thing in fungi history
in my opinion, these look way mroe alien and more mysteries
Fr
I wonder if they were psychedelic 😋🔥
@@dingolightfoot8823 I'm kind'a curious as to *why* they formed molecules with psychodelic properties - what function did they have in the organism itself..?
Imagine how many risottos you would do with a single one
If the issue was just predators, maybe we should try and grow giga fungi as crops...
@@OsirusHandle the mini mushrooms look kind of lame now
God i love risottos
@@DansLikeaRockstar agreed
Or how many trips you could take
One of the things I like about this channel is that the intro is quiet and not jarring. No loud music, no jumpy visuals, no adjusting the volume. Such a relief from most channels.
I love this guy. Best. I am making a Moth Light Media ACEO trading card this week.
Agreed, that's generally true for the content. It's so a refreshingly calm and clear. No all-caps clickbaity titles, no screaming, no drama. Just us, and prehistory. Kudos!
so calm.
Oof, so true.
Very true. It's so refreshing.
Literally started writing a fungal-forest sci-fi story last week and was trying to remember when these ancient badbois were called. Thanks Moth Light.
That sounds super cool!
Don’t let research details break your flow, fix it later, get back to the story …
Good luck on your work👍
Neat
Keep me posted
What really gets me about prehistoric ecosystems isn’t mostly the animals, but the plants making the earth look completely foreign from today.
This thing isn’t really a plant but still.
Imagine Earth before plants colonised land. Like Mars with oceans!
Autotrophs.
@@putridabomination but fungis are not autotroph
@@matteocarta7678 "Algae, along with plants and some bacteria and fungi, are autotrophs"
Some
Ah yes, Morrowind, what a wonderful province.
Underrated comment
😂
Prehistoric Telvanni wizards
Shivering Isles aswell
Outlander.
360,000,000 years from now
Documentary: When Trees Grew the size of Fungus
Broccoli
I doubt humanity will last that long
@@devin5531 we won’t, we’d either evolve into something else or die out entirely:p
@@devin5531 it’s a joke
You have high hopes
I mean this in the nicest way possible, these videos literally put me to sleep just cus of how mellow the vibe is
Lol I watch them when going to bed
This one in particular
Humans: "I wonder what ancient times were like..."
Ancient Times: **mold**
Fungi isn’t mold
I use to *mold* the world~~
@@_draco_7300 This is so funny that its isnt funny
@@yourfriendlyneighborhoodcl4824 I know
@@kandy1643 haha, pretty sure it was a joke, or they are just straight up stupid. I'm pretty sure its the first one tho.
Science fiction authors need look no farther than this to find a totally alien yet plausible world.
noted, I'm so including these in my stories :)
More sci fi like versions of ancient earth are: Red Ocean world, Purple Earth.
@@ProtiumPower yeah, but not much fauna and flora. Nice backdrop though.
We just get used to the things around us from seeing them since birth but this whole world even humans are super strange.
@@HisameArtwork I'd like to read your stories one day!
there's like 5 pictures in this video on repeat why did i actually watch this whole thing instead of just listening
Lol ikr same I think the pictures are just as fascinating
the pictures are absolutely haunting
@@HannibalHanslaughter i know right!
lol ikr same
Good images
This makes a lot of sense. Because the early Devonian period is also where we get the expression: "There's a humongous fungus among us."
So many "us" on the sentence bruhhh
sus.
amogus
Don't forget Humongous Fungus, the largest lifeform on Earth. I'd like to visit sometime and bask in its parasitic and poisonous glory.
me and the trigonotarbids chillin by the hot spring:
i wonder how many aliens came to earth millions of years ago and were like “hmmm just mushrooms and moss” and never came back
Lol maybe
Either that or they had their own wildlife documentary channel
They would have been smart enough to recognized Earth's potential.
I mean if they are out there they would monitor all planets with life, so they’ll come back
@@braedenconti36 Problem is it takes an incredibly long time to travel between star systems, there are approximately 10 billion planets within the habitable zone that are orbiting sun-like stars in the galaxy alone which contains 100-200 billion stars. There is simply too much space between us. No doubt in my mind they exist, but its easy to tell that they are not here (unless they are secretly present and want us to destroy our own biosphere, it will only take millions of years to get biodiversity back to early 20th century levels)
It’s a strange thing to think that when the Cambrian started, 90% of earth’s history had already happened...
jesus
For the first 4 billion years of Earth's history there was nothing but rocks and microbes. Single celled organisms and that was it. That is is 90% of Earth's history. Everything else happened in that last 10%.
@@Novusod don't worry about that giant planet that smashed into earth
@@pluggothesluggo5509 technically, earth is the product of the collision.
@@juliankirby9880 so when would earth's history technically begin? after the creation of the moon?
why is this the only video that covers ancient giant fungus. ill bet theres so many ancient beings that we never hear about cuz its not super popular like megalodon
eckosama There are plenty of vids on this topic lol, PBS Eons even has one. Your point still stand tho, relatively speaking
Megalodon would beat the shit out of Prototaxies that's why
megalodon is popular though
@@jacobhoover1654 i beg to differ, Megalodon's gonna have to come out of the water for that, the fungus has the home turf advantage.
There will be lots of species that never fossilized in the first place. How sad those are to time forever.
"trees did not exist yet" is a a sentence I'll need a while to get over, that's so wild to imagine
they wont exist again in a hundred or so years
@@jazzling Na we have all of thier seeds in a massive vault as a security contingency against human stupidity.
The Carboniferous didn't have bacteria that broke down matter, so there were just bodies and dead plants laying around not breaking down. That's the part that gets me.
Does that mean they didnt stink either? @@Moonlight_Tide
It's a giant mushroom, maybe it's friendly.
GIANT MUSHY FRIEND! Don’t forget your cactus juice
I met a friendly mushroom once. He was a real fun guy.
I've read some DnD Roper fan-fic. They're not freindly, nor understand the word "no"
@@xxRellekxx , it was a pun :p
I like to start my day with a dose of -coffee- cactus juice
I literally sit and contemplate reality as I eat a snow cone and wonder if the water in my cup once resided in a giant ancient mushroom.
It most likely did
If you really wanna get into every molecule that you interact with has likely interacted with almost every molecule On the planet at some other point
@@oscarwillis6643 but not mines lolol
@Pat Mckinnon It's really hard telling from the pov of a lay-person. Four and a half billion years is so fucking massive it's hard to conceive of. 1 million seconds is about a quarter of a year, while 1 billion seconds is 31 years. So it could well be that most molecules of the surface have interacted with each other by this point, but I admit my ignorance. I've never been all that good at/into math.
Without a doubt you probably had a few ancient mushroom water molecules. But it’s mostly piss molecules sorry dawg lol
Me: trying to convince myself to go to sleep
UA-cam: when fungus grew to the size if trees
😂😂😂😂
Same its 4 for me 😂😂😂 but fungus and minecraft shroom islands
Had to like it! 666
I'm in the same situation right now, it's 1:21 a.m. 😔
🤣🤣
The otherworldliness of these fungi cannot possibly outdo that of those I discover in the bottom of my refrigerator during its annual cleaning.
🤢
Better switch that shit to weekly
🤣
The kind you have to remove wearing gloves because you swear they gave you a rash last year 🤮
YEEEEES EXACTLY
this made me see the world from a new perspective and i just realized that trees are really weird, and the fact that we use them for "wood" is even weirder. we take a living thing and use the biological material it's composed of to build stuff. when you see a plank you normally just accept that that's what wood looks like, but you never think about the fact that the reason behind the texture, the sort of wavy patterns and the round dots that used to be twigs are all because of the fact that every piece of wood used to be the body of a living organism that grows, reproduces, needs sustenance and "breathes". imagine an alien planet where instead of trees they have fungi like in the video, and you just see the walls of the alien houses being made of mushy fungi with a trypophobia-inducing texture with pores and everything, it would be wild.
Alien planet you say? Haven't you heard of fungi bricks
Wood is tree meat
I didn’t realize how stupid people are until I read your comments
@@MrKevinbob21 your comment also made me realize this, MrKevinbob21
Yes you do
Honestly, those artworks give me a creepy feeling. I guess trees also give a sense of security, whereas mushrooms don't. But damn, it's fascinating.
Prolly bc mushrooms are just weird. They look weird, and they do weird things. If you eat a mushroom, it's a coin flip between having a nutritious meal, dying a horrible, painful death, or tripping balls and meeting god
@@Dust514rocks Pretty much sums up mushrooms.
The idea of being on earth 400 million years ago, when most of the land was still barren and devoid of life, is so profoundly lonely and bizarre. Most of the land would be barren desert, and the few areas with life would look like empty featureless grasslands. No land animals to walk alongside larger than small insects. Then you come across these huge towering monoliths that just don't fit in with the otherwise empty landscape. Completely alien yet so similar and directly related to our current world.
We evolved around trees, and prolly used to climb them for safety. Tall pillars of greyish-white is a completely alien and different environment
Probably an evolutionary/wisdom gained and passed down intelligence. We evolved in trees and climbing them so it makes sense why they give that feeling of security while mushrooms like the other guy stated is a 50/50 chance on dying so it could be that we evolved or passed down intelligence to stay away from certain organisms while learning to lvoe others.
It blew my mind when I found out sharks are older than trees.
Same as me!!!! I was like wtf 😳
I didnt even know that lmao wth
Wtf dude, fr?
@@w_ldan yes
Same I was like wtfh
I subscribe to a number of channels in this genre, but I believe yours is the best in presenting information in an easily digestible format, perfectly paced and memorable. Thank you.
"Giant Mushroom???"
"Maybe it's friendly!!!"
Lmao i love that scene
Atla?
@@moroni8299 Lmao ye Cactus Juice Sokka 🌵
Now I lowkey want a survival game set during that time
Survive from what? Hunger
@@thek5197 Don’t Starve
Morrowind
@@thek5197 lizard people 🦎
Resident evil
"Is that a prototaxitis in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
Edit: Thank you guys!
God damn it lol
Glad I wasn't the only one thinking it was a stinkhorn
Wanna touch my fungus fossil?
"I hope that white patch on your pants is just spores..."
imagine the death toll if that were true
I watched so many pbs or other government funded programs about this ancient fungi. But this is by far the best video on the ancient fungi that I have seen
Last time I was this early the fungi were still the size of trees.
How did u comment an hour ago if the video says it’s been posted 40 mins ago
@@morningstargeek4946 Paytreeon
69 likes
Nicee
I wish we could see the earth from start to finish on a timelapse.
Only until we get a time machine
What is the FINISH ?
@@akakabira Sun explodes.
How does it finish?
@@monkey10bobby probably the future humans leaving earth finding other habitable planets ig
If I lived in a world where mushrooms were as big as trees I would feel like a Smurf.
😂 good one
the first human prototype smirthasoid lived at this time the early anticedent to the dennisovans so its a partial possibility in the minds of dennisovan fantasy
@@itsolivier that's not true
@@nahum3557 true thats why i see Dennisovan fantasy, you cant preclude or conclude that they didnt or neanderthals didnt have refletion or imagination... or even culture for that matter. Who knows what they did or whether there where smirthasoids... 80% of species were wiped out at one point so its easy to imagine there blue smirth like creatures... but thats beside the point... these can all be Dennisovian imaginings we never got to understand because , there special thoughts were never placed onto paper. We dont know what Neanderthals and Dennisovans spoke about around the inter war campfire.
There was a pretty cool mushroom world in World of Warcraft. I think it was populated by elves or something.
stuff like this makes me wish i could travel back in time without having to worry about the butterfly effect. id love to be able to see stuff like these gigantic tree-fungi in person
Screw the butterfly effect save John Lennon
I’d keep it. Stomp on one of those horseshoe things and boom humans never existed
@@RiggyRonniebut then you can't stomp in the past
pretty soon we'll be able to have very accurate simulations of these eras thanks to virtual reality and AI
As a chef, my first question is: were they edible? Also, remind me to bring some butter and thyme in the time machine.
Well I mean you can eat anything... once
@@kevinpeters6709 On the subject of eating anything once, I wonder how did our ancestors develop fugu preparation technique?
I doubt they would be toxic since there wouldn't be large animals to eat them. That said, they probably were as rigid as wood or similar (to maintain the rigid shape), so maybe?
@@Ditidos , I think a lot of mycotoxins are to protect against bacteria, not large animals.
Thyme machine! Boom, nailed it.
Oh yes, new video from Moth Light! Let’s go
LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOO
Exactly
Moths are cooler than butterflies, that’s why they can make these cool videos, this is not a human, it’s a moth.
(Theory)
i started my channel before mothlight.... the guy grew so fast
'"Giant ancient fungus"- Ah, I see you too have met my father in law.
Imagine how wild and alien it would be to stand on a world with mushroom trees, some bugs, some moss...and nothing else.
Maybe this is dumb, but are there underwater fungi? Where did they come from?
There are water molds, and there was a mishroom found underwater in oregon or washington a few years ago. Im not sure if the underwater mushroom was a new species, or a fluke in habitat.
There are actually several different types of marine fungi however it is not a taxonomic grouping
Love this question. Now I want to know this too
So I'm short, mushrooms aren't real
Psathyrella aquatica
I really enjoy the calm and short intro in your video's. it displays what it needs to without being in your face about it.
Please don't change that.
I want to go back in time and eat a piece of it, even if it kills me
It might not be poisonous since not much was around to eat it
@@ZagorTeNayebo “re-calibrates time machine *tonight we feast boys*
@@spookyboivilla5386 Who needs to fuck the environment when you can fuck up the timeline.
~Humanity
@@ZagorTeNayebo even if its not poisonous by evolving into one as a defend mechanism, theres still elements that would kill a human when digested
You're gonna trip balls son
I actually get teary eyed when hearing about Earth's history.. it's an amazing story!
tbh i kinda wish that the mushroom obelisks still existed
2001: A Fungal Colony
Once again minecraft manages to be surprisingly realistic
Lol
I NEEDA PLAY MINECRAFT
let me just say this though: no cap
My 5 year old save got corrupted
@@yeeyee9970 Same it sucks
Keep doing what ur doing man, absolutely love it
Harry: ikr! 👍🏼 Moth
69 likes
If trees didn't exist back then, then how did anyone get wood to make a crafting table?
mineshafts
shipwreck
Nah you can use the stems to make warped or crimson planks smh
they stole the wood from villages
You’d get Mushroom planks! D U H H
Oh man, the Devonian, what a time to be alive.
Only 400,000,000 BC kids remember 😢
This is some of the coolest shit I've ever learned.
fugus
@@eebu4053 amogus
Time traveler 350 mil years ago: "Holy shit you will never believe the things i saw in the future. There are trees the size of MUSHTOOMS! "
His buddy: “What the fuck is a tree?”
1960s. rad bro why didnt you bring us back a sample
welp dude time traveled for no reason, it's called bonsai trees
This comment is great because of the spelling mistake😎
@@ffhhhbbfxfggggfdddffffffff r/wooosh
Just wanna say, I appreciate those zoom-in parallax shots where you copy in a background element to the front. Very nice! 👌🏻
How cool would it be if there were some spores still around. Imagine having those growing in your yard!
Imagine if you put a box around a area of dirt filled with spores and set up an environment for it to be able to grow
I think it'll take hundred years if you really want them to grow this tall
@@LittleFishy. where do you think mushroom islands come from?
@@younscrafter7372 space
Wrong air composition.
Also known as that time when Mother Earth got a yeast infection.
UNDERRATED
Why do you always have to say things like this?
lmfao
Tell me that's an isekai
I imagine its large size relative to modern fungi, aside from a lack of predators, also has to do the lack of tall plants. The video touched on this absence in terms of competition for sunlight if the fungus had a symbiotic relationship with photosynthesizing organisms, but pressure to grow large in a world of stout plants could have also come from the benefits of being tall enough to disperse spores over the heads of surrounding flora. Once vascularity opened the way for the evolution of tall plants like trees, the costs in energy and resources to outgrow them began to outweigh the benefits, so fungi turned to different strategies. For one, many small fruiting bodies between the tall plants became more cost-effective, but trees also provided a new opportunity for parasitization that allowed fruiting bodies to grow on their trunks and branches; essentially outsourcing the work of growing tall to the fungi's hosts while still reaping the remaining benefits height imbued.
Muschrrom
The old plate fungus climbing trees to squirt it's spores about. Sounds like a mad monkey masturbating in a tree to me
Fungi usually don't care about sunlight.
Minecrafters:
This is what we call mushroom islands
We making it outta the ocean with this one🗣🗣🔥🔥🔥
And then there's the so-called "Schunnemunk Tree" that Landing and Retallack seem to hypothesize had some kind of a branching structure on top of it, which - if true - could add to the photosynthesis hypothesis.
And that was a very wonderful video. Prototaxies have fascinated me since I first heard of them - partly because there's fossil evidence of them being found in my country as well so it's always interesting to imagine what my town might've looked like 300+ million years ago.
Excuse me, but what is your country?
@@gedeonnunes5626 I live in the baltics. There's no fossils of anything between mid-devonian and the last ice age but there's some fragmentary finds of prototaxites as well as lots of armored fish and - from earlier eras - sea scorpions, cephalopods and bits of fossilized coral.
Ah, I was wondering where the lichen hypothesis came from, the pillar-esque ones in the video didn't seem like they'd have the necessary surface area. Even so, surface area on modern mushrooms is maximized for spore dispersal so we'll need a lot more context to know.
prototaxites be like:
“I used to rule the world”
so trees 'rule the world' now just because they're bigger than us
We was kangz
*enter coldplay*
Your narrations have improved so much! the sound quality is better and you seem more confident I didn't even think I would be interested but you killed it.
Ahhh this really takes me back…. Earths beta was fire.
This video is so well elaborated and I love how you answered so many questions that developed while watching.
Plants and fungi are extremely interesting creatures. It's sad how many people aren't interested in them at all.
I am only interested in sex and money.
@@infinow chad.
@@kieranmcginley1262 protochad*
The ones that aren't interested are the ones that need to be eradicated from existence. They're the ones that turned the world into what it is today. Gross.
@@eggpod4567 Jesus christ
Next they're gonna find fossils of Netches and Guar.
Heyyy awesome to see another elder scrolls fan! Watching this, all I could think of was Morrowind
i hope so
As long as we dont find the bones of the Alit Im good.
Hello outlander, what brings you to our lands?
Ancient records indicate a sound known as "dagothwave" was heard throught the land
*through tears* BRING THEM BACK
God, fungi are always so fascinating to me. Like, not plants nor animals yet somewhere in between, always so bizzare and beautiful in their own way. Not to mention extremely important for the ecosystem.
it kinda freaks me out but i have a morbid case of curiosity, which is liking horror movies and thinking about all the possibilities but not liking getting scared
i want a bit of this 'god fungi' you talk about
@@arthurwittmann6242 fml i forgot
there is a funghi in the yellowstone nationalpark that is multiple km long and high
@@RustingPeace super cool! do you have any sources? im too lazy to google
when i said "take me back to the good old days" this is what i had in mind
"Many moons ago, there was one species towering above the baren land. Deeprooted, massive, they were the reason the place's name, Dildonia."
I lol'd
But the dildos were useless then
@@infinow what?
@@infinow Nah yo mama used them
@@renz1013 did your mama use them too🤔🤔
This is one of my favorite UA-cam channels and this video is fascinating. well done.
I love fungi. They are so unique and interesting. And I could never remember all the different kinds
This makes the Devonian Period sound so interesting and complex and I have learned so much about fungi with this video!
Might add, most likely delicious as well, since toxins are a reaction to foraging.
@Toland Belmar Well, considering they were bark-like enough to get confused for trees, and needed to be pretty firm to be able to be so big without falling apart, I wouldn't bet money on them being especially tasty. Besides, no mushroom will ever come close to the Karljohansvamp (Boletus edulis) in terms of deliciousness!
@@blondbraid7986 Nah I think not, they didnt have branches and their roots were likely extremely long, so they dont really need to be that firm. They were probably firmer than today's mushrooms but still really soft compared to trees i would say (also, the substances that make trees so rough only started being used millions of years later).
Man having a farm of these rhings would be awesome.
@@blondbraid7986 Exactly.
And with the nice texture of a piece of wood left in the water for some days.
@@flydrop8822 Mushroom "roots" can be very long but most times are thinner than a hair. I don't think they could give so much structural strength
first thing when i get that time machine is deep frying a 6meter fungus
Imagine going back in time and just seeing miles of white or gray pegs sticking out of the plains-like landscape.
"I wonder what the world was like before us humans"
World: Mooshroom Island
Quite mind blowing to realize that the body of a fungus is not the visible mushrooms but actually the mycelium hidden underneath the ground.
I really appreciate the channels that do not rely on a lot of slang, hyperbole, and manic shouting to create a false sense of excitement.
Thank you!
@Yeast Yeast I think you have an infection.
When you bonemeal a bunch of mushrooms
there's something terrifying about forests made out of mushrooms. Hell, even normal mushrooms are lowkey creepy
you must not do psychedelics 🤣 mushrooms are the opposite of creepy
My uncle is a mushroom farmer, if you meet him he could probably change your mind. He is a fun-ghi
M U S H R O O M
You should be. The fesr comes from deep inside, because were not the top of the food chain on earth. Mushrooms are. We are turned into mushroom food at the end of our lives.
They ain't creepy until u try
They grow 6-9 meters tall
Nice.
Nice
Nice
Funny number
that's about 20-30 feet tall.
Nice
I thought that a giant fungus was already cursed enough, then you have the AUDACITY to say it might be a lichen?
Imagine how big garden gnomes must have been back then!
The world in the devonian period looks so interesting, I wish I could go there
Everyone gangsta till the fungus starts talking
Alright Mario.
Hehehehe
"I'm in full control now!"
@Rhett Mclaughlins Chin What if... what if hallucigenic shrooms are the fungi kingdom's way of enslaving us? I suddenly remembered that shroom from X-files, like on of the few non-alien villains.
Or worse.... IF THE FUNGUS STAR TO PUNCH
I'd like to know more about the split between animal, fungi and plants and how they all went on to become multi cellular.
You made me curious. What came first, the split between fungi and animals, or multicellular non-plants?
Multicellular structure is an event that happened several times. Single celled algae evolved first into colonial algae before they differentiated into tissues. Animals seemed to have developed from a single-celled protista similar to Choanoflagalates which in turn are similar to sponges, an animal that lacks tissues. There are single celled fungi and fungi-like protists. All excellent examples of convergent evolution.
@@douglasstemke2444 So the split between fungi and animals occurred when they were still single celled?
@@davedevosbaarle I don't know if I can post links here, but this would take you to the current phylogeny of protists as understood using molecular (DNA) analysis. You can see where plants, fungi, and animals all connect. courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-wmopen-biology2/chapter/groups-of-protists/
Each connecting branch represents a common ancestor. Since all these branches occur in the protists, one would expect them all to be single celled. Just to add, there are some multicellular Brown Algae (kelp) and Red Algae, but the current hypothesis would suggest independent single celled organisms as their link in the protista.
This is what the shrigma grindset can achieve.
I love when I discover a channel and binge watch literally everything XD
This is my first video from your channel. I think I'll be binge watching today, it's so nice to come across a UA-camr who isn't shouty and dramatic
Agreed
This popped up in my recommended and was surprisingly interesting for someone not very much interested in ancient fungi.
Uuuuuuuuuuuu
Shout out to the camera man going back in time for these photos
You guys are everywhere, aren't you?
This video's title is the most unintentionally Technical Brutal Death Metal title ever.
Sounds more like a cover song about either psychadelics or just straight up about mushrooms being really big
That's wild. I really hope someone creates the simulations of how these worlds became and changed through the eras. It's so cool to hear about it, and see art about it. But to see it in full effect and how the ecosystem could have worked is also so much fun to see and understand.
Maybe one day with virtual reality getting better!
Your content makes ancient stuff super interesting.
anybody felt a strange feeling of nostalgia and want to just sit there and cry?
There's a humungus fungus among us
I've seen pictures of these around the internet and was always interested. But TBH I was kind of just waiting for you to make a video on it. Thank you!
SMH, you can grow mushrooms the size of trees if you plant them on a mycelium block. Bring a pickaxe enchanted with silk touch to a mushroom biome
Yeah, but you need bone meal for that. It can also work with potzol found in mega taiga biomes or by growing a spruce tree with four saplings.
Or find some podzol from bamboo jungle biomes
Fungus is so cool, it's been around so long and still has so many unknown properties that we're still studying to this day, but we've already created amazing medicine from fungus, imagine if we keep studying it.
fungi*
wrong visual when talking about the hyphae
you pointed to the cap of a modern mushroom.
the hyphae are the underground cells that make up the mycelium.
Well the fruiting body is made out of mycelium too, just tighter and the cells are swollen more with water. Cap tissue becomes the wispy mycelium we are familiar with once you put it in some food source too.
now *this* is the type of stuff I would love to be taught in school
Exactly
This was incredibly interesting. Thought it was a PBS Eons video until I heard your voice! At least as impressive as any of those. Thanks for making this :)
If a human being could come back in time to this period, he/she would certainly think Earth was an alien planet
Why does the mushroom always get invited to the party?
**He is a Fungi**
Fungi when choosing a house: How mushroom?
@@johncarlofernandez2698 Fungi when choosing a car: How mushroom??
Okay this is literally diving into my dream realm of moss covered ecosystems with giant fungus, crazy Lichen species, ferns, and weird little critters our imagination can barely think of but nature made them at one time. (Think of all the things that don't fossilize well or at all?) These fungi trees are very much like cordyceps
this video feels like a fever dream. i want to go there. why do i want to go there?
okay yknow what, i found you like a month ago in my algorithm and now im really into this stuff, i watch you at night or day (more night, im a night person)