We thought we had solved the mystery of the giant “trees” of the Paleozoic. We couldn’t be more wrong

More than a century ago, when the first known fossils of Prototaxitesintuition said that it should be the remains of a tree. Decades of study revealed to paleontologists that this fossil did not belong to a plant, so everything seemed to indicate that it was an immense fungus. Now a new study has reopened this unknown.

Neither plant nor fungus. The study in question has revived the discussion About the nature and taxonomy of Prototaxitesprehistoric beings that so far the catalog scientific consensus as fungi. The involvement of “taking out” these beings from the evolutionary branch of fungi is that perhaps these beings belonged to an extinct and unknown branch of the tree of evolution.

400 million years ago. What we do know about Prototaxites For the fossil registry, it is that being trafficking with organisms that were alive towards the middle of the Paleozoic era, does Between 420 million and 375 million years. These beings had a more or less cylindrical structure, similar to a trunk and stood up to eight meters above the sky with a diameter that the subway could reach. These measures and their age make them one of the first large beings of those of which we have record in the fossil registry.

The debate on the nature of these prehistoric living beings seemed to mid -2000s. It was then that an analysis revealed that the Prototaxites They did not obtain their carbon from photosynthesis, as is the case of plants, but obtained from other living organisms, as fungi do.

Rhynie Chert. The new study that reopens the case It now contributes tests that this being did not belong to the kingdom of fungi and focuses on one of the known species of this genus, Taiti prototaxites. The team resorted to the fossils found at the Rhynie Chert site in Scotland. This site contains not only fossil remains of this species, but also of fungal species and others belonging to other kingdoms of nature.

Similarities and differences. The new analysis of the fossils of this species ran into some similarities with fungal structures such as those that could be expected. However, despite having tubular internal structures similar to those of fungi, these tubes in P. Taiti They branched and linked in a different way from what they could expect. That was not, however the strangest detail.

The analysis did not detect in fossils evidence of the products that are associated with the presence of chitina, a compound present in the cell walls of all contemporary fungi and that we know was also present in prehistoric fungi. They found that the chemical “firm” was more similar to that left behind by lignin, a polymer that we associate with vascular plants.

The study has been published for now draft In the repository Biorxivso the standardized scrutiny of peer review has not yet passed.

So what? This detail implies that we must extreme caution when drawing conclusions from the study we have in front. Even so, the signing team of the study outlines in this its conclusions, in principle preliminary.

In his study, the team concludes that “the morphology and the molecular footprint of P. Taiti It is clearly different from that of fungi and other organisms preserved with it in Rhynie Chert, and we suggest that it is better considered a member of a group not described and totally extinct of eukaryotes. ”

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