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Giant, Fungus-Like Organism May Be Completely Unknown Branch of Life
samedi 29 mars 2025, 02:10 , par Slashdot
![]() True fungi from the same period have also been preserved in the Rhynie chert, enabling the researchers to chemically compare them to Prototaxites. In addition to their unique structural characteristics, the team found that the Prototaxites fossils left completely different chemical signatures to the fungi fossils, indicating that the Prototaxites did not contain chitin, a major building block of fungal cell walls and a hallmark of the fungal kingdom. The Prototaxites fossils instead appeared to contain chemicals similar to lignin, which is found in the wood and bark of plants. 'We conclude that the morphology and molecular fingerprint of P. taiti is clearly distinct from that of the fungi and other organism preserved alongside it in the Rhynie chert, and we suggest that it is best considered a member of a previously undescribed, entirely extinct group of eukaryotes,' the researchers wrote. The research has been published on the preprint server bioRxiv. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/28/238210/giant-fungus-like-organism-may-be-completely-unkn...
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