Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 71 posts

Re: A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly

#21

Post by galangalalgol »

climb_stealth wrote: post #15
dclowd9901 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently visited the national history museum and finally got a sense of the _weirdness_ of prehistoric trees. No bark, a green trunk (utilizing photosynthesis), tall like a palm tree. I'd love to see something like that now.

That sounds awesome! The oddest trees I have come across had big thorns like roses all over the trunk. Kind of hard to see because the trunk is so big, but you'd very quickly notice leaning against it. That was in a botanical garden in Australia. No idea what they were or how common they are. Blew my mind.

Ceiba speciosa maybe? That is a weird tree for sure. I grew up where there were wild thorny honeylocust trees. The trunks are spotted with dense clusters of branching thorns, some of which are 8" long and stiff enough to puncture tractor tires. To paraphrase family guy, nature is scary.

Re: A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly

#23

Post by pfdietz »

jgilias wrote: post #12
n_kr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trees, for example, have separately evolved at least 100 times. Can you explain more? Sounds interesting

Not OP, but: https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2021/05/02/theres-no-such-th...

Thank you for link.

As an aside there: the blog post briefly talks about birds. It turns out that membrane wings are much easier to evolve than feathered wings. There have been lots of membrane winged creatures (including "birds" with membrane wings in the Jurassic) but not nearly as many appearances of feathered wings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxA38gH8Gj4

Re: A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly

#24

Post by dotancohen »

galangalalgol wrote: post #21
climb_stealth wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds awesome! The oddest trees I have come across had big thorns like roses all over the trunk. Kind of hard to see because the trunk is so big, but you'd very quickly notice leaning against it. That was in a botanical garden in Australia. No idea what they were or how common they are. Blew my mind.

Ceiba speciosa maybe? That is a weird tree for sure. I grew up where there were wild thorny honeylocust trees. The trunks are spotted with dense clusters of branching thorns, some of which are 8" long and stiff enough to puncture tractor tires. To paraphrase family guy, nature is scary.

Yeah, we've got these in Beersheba (south of Israel). The only tree my ten year old won't climb. They've also got really interesting cotton-like fruits, though I'm not brave enough to taste them.

Re: A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly

#26

Post by Rendello »

climb_stealth wrote: post #15
dclowd9901 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently visited the national history museum and finally got a sense of the _weirdness_ of prehistoric trees. No bark, a green trunk (utilizing photosynthesis), tall like a palm tree. I'd love to see something like that now.

That sounds awesome! The oddest trees I have come across had big thorns like roses all over the trunk. Kind of hard to see because the trunk is so big, but you'd very quickly notice leaning against it. That was in a botanical garden in Australia. No idea what they were or how common they are. Blew my mind.

The oddest tree I know of is poplar, which is incredibly common around here and is basically considered junk wood. Turns out, those individual, fast-growing trees are in fact stems of a large underground root system.

One of these trees has 47,000 stems:

> Most agree [...] that Pando encompasses 42.89 hectares (106 acres), weighs an estimated 6,000 metric tons (6,600 short tons) or 13.2 million pounds, and features an estimated 47,000 stems, which die individually and are replaced by genetically identical stems that are sent up from the tree's vast root system, a process known as "suckering". The root system is estimated to be several thousand years old, with habitat modeling suggesting a maximum age of 14,000 years and 16,000 years by the latest (2024) estimate.[

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)

Re: A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly

#29

Post by jpfdez »

Rendello wrote: post #26
climb_stealth wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds awesome! The oddest trees I have come across had big thorns like roses all over the trunk. Kind of hard to see because the trunk is so big, but you'd very quickly notice leaning against it. That was in a botanical garden in Australia. No idea what they were or how common they are. Blew my mind.

The oddest tree I know of is poplar, which is incredibly common around here and is basically considered junk wood. Turns out, those individual, fast-growing trees are in fact stems of a large underground root system. One of these trees has 47,000 stems: > Most agree [...] that Pando encompasses 42.89 hectares (106 acres), weighs an estimated 6,000 metric tons (6,600 short tons) or 13.2 million pounds, and features an…

Poplars have underground roots, but they are not "underground root stems" per se. Their main stem is the trunk we see growing above ground.

Re: A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly

#30

Post by marcellus23 »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #14
pfdietz wrote: post #4

These aren't necessarily related to today's Ophiocordyceps fungus. Fungi that take control of arthropods and cause them to climb to disperse spores have convergently evolved more than once, including Arthrophaga myriapodina, which affects millipedes, and is in a different Division (the level above Class) from Ophiocordyceps. Convergent evolution is more common than you might think. Trees, for example, have separately…

I recently visited the national history museum and finally got a sense of the _weirdness_ of prehistoric trees. No bark, a green trunk (utilizing photosynthesis), tall like a palm tree. I'd love to see something like that now.

which museum? Do you mean the Natural History Museum in New York?
Post reply on HN