Over 400 Million Years Ago, Giant Mushrooms Covered The Earth

When Hueber published his work indicating the mysterious organism was a fungus, not everyone was convinced that he had found the solution so many scientists had worked decades to uncover. For one, it didn't make sense that such a giant fungus would be able to get enough nutrients and energy from decaying matter to survive. According to Signs of the Times, the other plants that existed at this time some 400 million years ago were "at most 6.5-feet tall, close to a quarter the size of one of these "mushrooms." 

In an interview with Live Science, University of Chicago paleobotanist C. Kevin Boyce said any explanation for the living organism — albeit classified as a plant, fungus, or something else — might seem like a stretch in modern times, where we don't have any organisms that even faintly resemble this mysterious shrooming behemoth. "A 20-foot-tall fungus doesn't make any sense," he told Live Science. "Neither does a 20-foot-tall algae make any sense, but here's the fossil."

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