A TOTALLY new form of life that towered at 26ft tall has been discovered by UK scientists 370million years after it went extinct.
A 410million-year-old fossil has been discovered in Scotland and is thought to be neither a plant or fungus, but an entirely new form of life.
It goes by the name of Prototaxites and was discovered in Rhynie, Aberdeenshire sparking excitement across the scientific community.
Scientists say that it was initially thought to be a form of fungus that formed its own evolutionary path.
The fossil itself was identified as being 410million years old and the lifeform died out around 360million years ago.
Prototaxites was once the largest organism on land and towered over other lifeforms at a staggering 26ft tall before it went extinct.
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In a new study, researchers discovered the fossil in a sedimentary deposit known as the Rhynie chert.
Named after the nearby village of Rhynie, it contains remarkably well-preserved fossils and provides a unique insight into the time period.
Lead co-author Dr Sandy Hetherington, a research associate at National Museums Scotland said: “It’s really exciting to make a major step forward in the debate over Prototaxites, which has been going on for around 165 years.
“They are life, but not as we now know it, displaying anatomical and chemical characteristics distinct from fungal or plant life, and therefore belonging to an entirely extinct evolutionary branch of life.”
Prototaxites has been the subject of fierce debate in the scientific community since the 19th century.
The fossils were first collected in 1843 and they were studied 14 years later by a Canadian scientist who described them as partially-rotten giant conifers which had been decomposed by fungi.
A new paper now challenges the original assumption that Prototaxites was a fungus due to its differing chemical make up.
Co-first author Laura Cooper, a PhD student from the Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, said: “Our study, combining analysing the chemistry and anatomy of this fossil, demonstrates that Prototaxites cannot be placed within the fungal group.
“As previous researchers have excluded Prototaxites from other groups of large complex life, we concluded that Prototaxites belonged to a separate and now entirely extinct lineage of complex life.
“Prototaxites therefore represents an independent experiment that life made in building large, complex organisms, which we can only know about through exceptionally preserved fossils.”
The life form dates from the Late Silurian period until the Late Devonian period, between 420 and 370million years ago, according to the new paper in Science Advances.
The period was marked by an extraordinary change on the Earth’s surface which saw a rise to dominance of plants, animals and fungi on land.
Prototaxites is thought of the largest organism during this period only to be later overtaken by trees.
The newly found fossils will be housed at the National Museums Collections Centre in the north of Edinburgh.
Elsewhere, the discovery of a faded hand outline on a cave wall in Indonesia may represent the world’s oldest known rock art, re-writing human history.
Archaeologists believe the artwork dates back at least 67,800 years, more than 1,000 years earlier than the previous record-holder.
