Did giant mushrooms rule the Devonian land?
As the first land plants colonised the land around the early Devonian period (419 to 359 million years ago), and the tallest trees were only a metre high, enigmatic fossils up to 8 metres tall and 1 wide were the globe’s largest surface organism, and possibly largest life form. These fossils, found worldwide and called Protoaxites, have puzzled palaeontologists since their first discovery in 1843.