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@til Today I learned that 400 million years ago, the largest land organism was kinda like a giant sausage sticking out of the ground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites
So diglett was real?
this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
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I hope you all read some of the wiki. It was more like a tree.
I mean, sorta, but also not really. A fungus tree with no leaves I suppose
"Dawson's 1888 reconstruction of a conifer-like Prototaxites"
Can we vote for that?
Make Pangea Sausage Again
I had an archaeologist friend some years ago with a "Reunite Gondwanaland" bumper sticker on his car. One day a Florida redneck in a giant pickup pulled up next to us at a red light, stuck his head out the window and yelled "yo, fuck Gondwanaland!"
Yep , fungus is what created trees and grass
Kinda. More than likely grasses cause fungus is generally accepted as the first creator of soil, but It took fungus some 10 million years to figure out how to digest lignin. There's debate on which first made the metaphorical leap from the water, as we have found some fungi capable of breaking down silicate rocks but plenty of proto plants were living in tidal areas. But fungus was way before lignin, and then we had plenty of time in between the first appearance of lignin and fungus breaking it down.
So trees actually created the fungus we're most familiar with today.
I think the name was Big Mush-Dong
Well, we only assume they were erect, these weren't mushrooms.
That's just a Celestial that didnt get born.
Welp, into the failures cave with the others then
Shai-Hulewd?
Is that a...
Huge throbbing prototaxite? Yes.
Women would like to know your location.
Wow, spoiler alert, apparently E.T. didn't make that flight.
Tap for spoiler
Ouch