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Plant, animal or fungus? A mysterious ancient life form may rewrite our understanding of evolution
An ancient life form that lived around 420 million years ago fundamentally challenges everything we think we know about evolution and the classification of species. The organism known as Prototaxites, which could grow up to eight metres tall, was neither a plant, nor a fungus, nor an animal – according to the latest research, it may represent a completely unknown evolutionary lineage that has since gone extinct.
The living world of the ancient Earth was far more alien and unpredictable than we might imagine based on today’s plant and animal life. At the dawn of life on land, not only did the first plants and simple animals appear, but also ancient organisms whose structure and functioning bore no resemblance to anything alive today. These so-called evolutionary dead ends have long since vanished, yet their fossils continue to raise new questions about the origins and diversity of life.
The discovery of Prototaxites
The story of one of the strangest fossil organisms began in 1843, when the remains of Prototaxites were first discovered, and it was immediately clear that something unusual had been found. The unbranched, cylindrical organism resembled a tree trunk more than any known living thing, and its sheer size was astonishing in itself: some specimens may have reached a height of 26 feet (around eight metres), while their width could exceed one metre.
Over the decades, the scientific community was unable to agree on what this ancient life form actually was. It was initially thought to be a plant, later an alga, and eventually, following a chemical analysis published in 2007, the dominant theory for many years held that Prototaxites was a gigantic, ancient species of fungus. This interpretation was based on the assumption that the organism fed on decaying organic matter rather than relying on photosynthesis.
An ancient life form on an extinct evolutionary branch
Recent research, however, has fundamentally overturned this view. According to a study published in Science Advances, the anatomical and chemical properties of Prototaxites do not fit those of either fungi or plants.