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January 21, 2026<\/p>\n
3 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Mystery tower fossils may come from a newly discovered kind of life<\/p>\n Towering Prototaxites ruled Earth before trees\u2014and they may have been a form of life entirely new to science<\/p>\n By Cody Cottier edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier<\/span><\/p>\n Reconstruction of Prototaxites taiti, which could reach the height of a telephone pole, growing in the 407-million-year-old Rhynie chert ecosystem.<\/p>\n Matt Humpage, Northern Rogue Studios<\/p>\n Before trees came along some 400 million years ago, our planet\u2019s landscape was dominated by enigmatic, spire-shaped life-forms that towered more than 25 feet above the ground. Their trunklike fossils were discovered in 1843. Yet despite more than a century of speculation, scientists have struggled to answer the most basic question about Earth\u2019s original terrestrial giants: What were they?<\/p>\n According to a new study, that may be because they belonged to a previously unknown branch of life.<\/p>\n The first person to examine this biological misfit did so in 1855, and in 1859 he dubbed it Prototaxites, which means \u201cearly yew.\u201d The name stuck, even though experts soon realized the organism wasn\u2019t a tree at all. Maybe it was some kind of land-based kelp or a megalithic mushroom? \u201cIt feels like it doesn\u2019t fit comfortably anywhere,\u201d says Matthew Nelsen, a senior research scientist at the Field Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the new study. \u201cPeople have tried to shoehorn it into these different groups, but there are always things that don\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n Over time, two main hypotheses emerged: either Prototaxites was an ancient fungus, or it fell into a category all its own. Now, after comparing fossils from these cryptic organisms with fossil fungi from the same rock deposit, the authors of the new study, published today in Science Advances, conclude that Prototaxites was likely a distinct lineage. That would place it on an equal footing with the six currently recognized kingdoms of life: those of plants, animals, fungi, protists, bacteria and archaea.<\/p>\n A fossil specimen of Prototaxites taiti shows its spotty internal structure.<\/p>\n Laura Cooper, University of Edinburgh<\/p>\n Prototaxites was composed of interwoven tubes, giving it a superficial resemblance to fungi. But the anatomical similarities end there. The researchers found that Prototaxites\u2019 tubes branched wildly, whereas the threadlike hyphae in modern fungi follow more orderly patterns. Plus, the researchers detected no chemical trace of chitin, a polymer found in the cell walls of all living fungi and in the fossil fungi that were preserved alongside Prototaxites. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t seem to have any of the characteristic features of the living fungal groups,\u201d says the study\u2019s co-lead author Laura Cooper, a Ph.D. student at the University of Edinburgh.<\/p>\n This wasn\u2019t totally unforeseen. In a 2022 paper that Nelsen co-authored with paleobotanist Kevin Boyce of Stanford University, the researchers argued that \u201cif Prototaxites was indeed of fungal origin, it may represent part of an extinct lineage\u201d\u2014in other words, it already stood apart from other fungi. Boyce is agnostic about where Prototaxites truly belongs, and he isn\u2019t prepared to cast it out of the fungal kingdom yet. But he notes that even if the organism is merely an oddball fungus, it independently evolved a unique form of complex, multicellular life. \u201cNo matter what,\u201d Boyce says, \u201cit\u2019s something weird doing its own thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Prototaxites taiti towers over the surrounding landscape in a paleoenvironment reconstruction of the 407-million-year-old Rhynie chert hot spring ecosystem.<\/p>\n Matt Humpage, Northern Rogue Studios<\/p>\n Cooper argues Prototaxites \u201cwas so fundamentally different from the fungi we see today\u201d that \u201ctrying to shove it in the fungi is not productive.\u201d Whether or not this study settles the question of taxonomy, there\u2019s much left to learn. Previous work by Boyce shows that Prototaxites probably played an ecological role much like that of fungi: consuming decayed organic matter. But little organic matter was available. In a world of ankle-high plants, these organisms grew tall as telephone poles. \u201cHow that actually works energetically,\u201d Cooper says, \u201cis still a complete mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January 21, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Mystery tower fossils may come from a newly discovered kind of life Towering Prototaxites ruled Earth before trees\u2014and they may have been a form of life entirely new to science By Cody Cottier edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier Reconstruction of Prototaxites taiti, which could<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42340,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[5178,10268,1210,337,1956,5177,22342,12495,12135],"class_list":{"0":"post-42339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-discovered","9":"tag-fossils","10":"tag-kind","11":"tag-life","12":"tag-mystery","13":"tag-newly","14":"tag-prototaxites","15":"tag-represent","16":"tag-tower"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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