Captions provided by CCTubes – Captioning the Internet! 420 million years ago, a giant feasted on the dead, growing slowly into the largest living thing on land. It belonged to an unlikely group of pioneers that ultimately made life on land possible — the fungi.
Produced in collaboration with PBS Digital Studios: http://youtube.com/pbsdigitalstudios
Thanks to Franz Anthony of 252mya.com and Jon Hughes of jfhdigital.com for their tremendous reconstructions of Prototaxites.
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References:
http://www.davidmoore.org.uk/21st_Century_Guidebook_to_Fungi_PLATINUM/REPRINT_collection/Hueber_Prototaxites2001.pdf
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070425-fungus-fossil_2.html
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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/boj.12389/abstract
https://qz.com/630770/a-scientist-identified-the-oldest-land-fossil-ever-and-realized-it-was-eating-something-even-older/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034666713000948
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/3427499.stm ~419mya
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https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article-abstract/30/5/391/192367/first-steps-on-land-arthropod-trackways-in?redirectedFrom=fulltext
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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263080406_Rotted_wood-alga-fungus_The_history_and_life_of_Prototaxites_Dawson_1859
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/paleontological-society-special-publications/article/solution-to-the-enigma-of-prototaxites/F153A7007C25269D6C58734E8FF96F18
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2396361.pdf
https://www.academia.edu/891357/Early_terrestrial_animals_evolution_and_uncertainty
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