The 26-Foot Mystery of the Devonian Period

What was especially puzzling about the finding was that it was ancient. It was the Devonian Period, about 420 to 350 million years ago, a period when life on the earth was still forming. It took more than a century to classify what seemed to be a being that was beyond the natural hierarchy of its day.

The Discovery and Initial Confusion

The story started in Quebec, Canada, when Sir John William Dawson, who was an eminent geologist and paleobotanist, discovered the fossilized remains. The specimen seemed at first sight to be a giant, decayed tree-trunk. Since the find was of vast size, Dawson tentatively named it an ancient conifer and called it Prototaxites.

Nevertheless, when other scientists investigated the specimen in microscopes, the classification disintegrated. Other vascular plants, like trees, have a certain internal structure, including rings and water transportation structures. The prototaxites did not possess these features. Rather, its internal anatomy was a loose network of fine and interconnected tubes. This brought about decades of heated analysis in the scientific community. It was theorized by some experts that it was some form of giant seaweed that had blown ashore, and some others that it might have been an oversized lichen or an extinct form of moss.

A Giant Among Dwarfs

To understand the reason why the production of such confusion was the result of the work of the *Prototaxites*, it is necessary to analyze the Devonian landscape. At this period, the landmasses of the earth were slowly turning green, but the forests back then were distinctly not what they are today. Plants were mostly primitive and had no deep root system, and hardly exceeded a few feet in height.

Knee-high shrubbery would have taken the place of anatomical anomaly in this world. It was a tall, slender tower far above all other living beings on earth. It had no foliage, no branches, and no flowers. It was, in essence, a huge smooth-sided column that stuck out of the ground. Due to the fact that it was the largest land organism at that time, the fact that it was not a plant was a hard thing to believe for many of the early researchers.

Solving the Mystery with Chemistry

The breakthrough has finally materialized in the year 2007, courtesy of modern-day chemical analysis. Kevin Boyce, a researcher at the University of Chicago, used carbon-isotope testing to determine the biological nature of the organism.

Photosynthesis enables plants to obtain their carbon through carbon dioxide in the air. In turn, it means that plants growing in one particular environment are likely to have a similar proportion of the carbon isotopes. Fungi, on the other hand, do not work that way; they are heterotrophs, which feed on the soil. These researchers found that there was a considerable amount of difference in the carbon-isotope levels of the fossils of the so-called Prototaxites. This showed that the organism did not photosynthesize. Rather, it was consuming any organic matter that it could find at its specific site.

It was concluded with certainty that *Prototaxites* was a giant fungus. It was, in reality, a prehistoric mushroom two stories high.

The End of a Giant

These fungal titans came to an end. With the further development of the Devonian Period, true trees were evolving. New plants also evolved vascular systems and deep roots, and that is why the plants became taller, and they competed for light and space.

Scientists assume that, with the increase in the density and height of forests, the ecological niche that was occupied by the species of the Purported taxa, i.e., the species of the Prototaxites, became extinct. The giant fungi have not been able to compete with the efficiency of large plant life. Their last appearance in the fossil record must have been around 350 million years ago, and all that is left to us of them are these huge, stone pillars to remind us of a period when mushrooms and not trees were king of the planet.

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