Today I learned that 400 million years ago, the largest land organism was kinda like a giant sausage sticking out of the ground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites

I had an archaeologist friend some years ago with a "Reunite Gondwanaland" bumper sticker on his car. One day a Florida redneck in a giant pickup pulled up next to us at a red light, stuck his head out the window and yelled "yo, fuck Gondwanaland!"

I mean, sorta, but also not really. A fungus tree with no leaves I suppose , although the drawing sorta makes it look leaf like

"Dawson's 1888 reconstruction of a conifer-like Prototaxites"

Kinda. Maybe grasses cause fungus is generally accepted as the first creator of soil, but It took fungus some 10 million years to figure out how to digest lignin. There's debate on which first made the metaphorical leap from the water, as we have found some fungi capable of breaking down silicate rocks but plenty of proto plants were living in tidal areas. But fungus was way before lignin, and then we had plenty of time in between the first appearance of lignin and fungus breaking it down.

So trees actually created the fungus we're most familiar with today.

or he's having a great dream....

Welp, into the failures cave with the others then

::: spoiler Tap for spoiler Ouch :::

Huge throbbing prototaxite? Yes.