Prototaxites

"About 400 million years ago—long before the first giant dinosaurs—a massive and strange organism up to 8 meters long loomed over the Lilliputian plants, mushrooms, and bugs that carpeted the land"

Not a fungus. Not a lichen. Not a plant ...

An unknown branch of multicellular life that went extinct

https://www.science.org/content/article/bizarre-400-million-year-old-fossil-was-unknown-life-form

#fossils #Prototaxites #newFormOfLife #evolutionaryBiology #Edinburgh #Scotland #paleobiology #RhynieChert