400 million years ago,
giant mushrooms the size of houses
dominated the land.
Yet, over time, they disappeared
and evolved into the smaller versions
we know and love today.
But what if we found a way to bring them back?
This is What If, and here's what would happen
During the Devonian Period,
about 420 to 350 million years ago,
plants had not yet fully flourished
and were merely a few feet tall.
Still, massive mushrooms,
were plentiful,
due to the rich supply of bacteria
found in the soil.
This special soil, known as
harbored a crust of living organisms
made up of fungi, mosses,
green algae, bacteria and lichens.
At this point in time,
much of Earth's land was covered in this soil,
which made it the perfect breeding ground for fungi.
Believe it or not,
ancient mushrooms didn't have caps,
which thankfully allowed generous sunlight
for vascular plants to evolve.
Prototaxites were pivotal in their progress,
as they acted as symbiotic roots for plants.
The mushrooms' feeding tubes,
secreted organic acids to dissolve rocks
and extract nutrients in a process known as
Plants, in turn, would absorb the sunlight
through photosynthesis
and transfer energy to the mushrooms.
They were essentially besties for life.
If it weren't for gigantic fungi,
we may not have forests
or oxygen rich environments
to harbor complex life-forms,
such as ourselves.
Today, vast networks of
allow trees to transfer essential nutrients to one another.
It's like a fully organic form of the internet,
minus all the spam and memes.
In the mushroom network,
things go viral in a totally different way.
Fungi has been used to cure deadly viruses
and comprises the basis of lifesaving antibiotics,
such as penicillin.
They've also been found to digest hydrocarbons in petroleum
and polyurethane plastics,
and absorb heavy metals like mercury.
Scientists have even discovered a species of fungi in Chernobyl
that feeds on radiation,
which converts it into chemical energy in a process called
In a way, having mega mushrooms all over the planet
could solve a lot of problems like pollution
or cleaning up oil spills and radioactive areas.
But what are the risks?
Could giant mushrooms hurt our planet?
Although many forms of fungi are beneficial,
out of 1.5 million species on Earth,
at least 300 of them are poisonous to us.
If we tried to introduce them back into our ecosystem,
we would need to be very careful about their toxicity.
As the most widely distributed organisms on Earth,
many of them remain a mystery to us.
We would need a team of experts
to manage their harvest around the world,
just as forest managers regulate our tree harvesting.
Without proper care, these mighty mushrooms
could gobble up all the vital nutrients
for plant life to grow and become an invasive species.
And since fungi also inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide,
humans would have a rampant rival
for the air we breathe.
Giant mushrooms likely couldn't survive in today's world
unless they were carefully contained,
as there is already too much competition from plants.
Scientists are still debating why prototaxites went extinct,
but there are a couple of theories.
Either they didn't grow fast enough
to recover from animals eating them,
or the abundance of vascular plants
outcompeted them for nutrients.
So maybe their hearty size
actually proved their downfall.
Nevertheless, if we found a way to grow these giants again,
we could use mushrooms in many interesting ways.
How about, sun reflectors, sources of shade,
culinary delicacies, medicine,
garbage absorbers, transcendental healing,
or at the very least,
trampolines to bounce around on!
Okay, that's maybe not the safest idea,
but it would really put the fun
in fungi.
In all honesty, we have a lot to thank our ginormous fungi friends for.
They fostered the forests,
which gave us oxygen rich environments,
allowing complex animals like humans to evolve.
Though presumably we won't have giant mushrooms
similar to the Devonian Period any time soon,
it's interesting to wonder if humans could have survived back then.
But that's a story for another What If.