Multicellular life comes in all varieties: Plants, animals, fungi. Godzillas.
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
An enormous fossil once THOUGHT to be a fungus is now being reexamined. Is this the “Godzilla of fungus,” as it has been called? Or something entirely NEW?
Corentin Loron and team at University of Edinburgh investigated.
Tube-like shapes in the fossil look SIMILAR to structures in fungi. But! Researchers found that the tube branching patterns differ. The team suggests that the fossil may not belong to any known category of multicellular life!
This new lifeform could completely change our evolutionary family tree!
I just hope it’s more like the Japanese Godzilla. The American one sucks!
Reference: Corentin C. Loron et al. ,Prototaxites fossils are structurally and chemically distinct from extinct and extant Fungi.Sci. Adv.12,eaec6277(2026).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.aec6277