In science fiction, alien planets are populated by bizarre creatures, full of intense and strange environments, and more fantastically colored than Joseph's Dreamcoat. Makes stupid old Earth look downright boring and drab by comparison, like the cosmos' accountant. But if you look to the past, you might find our sensible stomping grounds used to have a lot more flair.

6 Before Trees, There Were Fungus Forests

Mary Parrish

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Travel back around 400 million years, and you wouldn't have seen any forests, but that doesn't mean there wasn't anything to fill that particular role in nature. Before trees, Earth was covered in "forests" of 20-foot-tall mushrooms.

Mary Parrish

And cats with creepy grins and men in giant hats.

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Back in 1859 in Canada, scientists started digging up the fossils of what they believed were ancient tree trunks, but it wasn't until 2007 that they finally confirmed the "tree" was a fungus. The organism, called Prototaxites, towered up to 24 feet tall and made a landscape that looked more like a Super Mario Bros. level than modern Earth.

Smithsonian Institution

Either that, or they were dildos for dinosaurs.

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And Prototaxites wasn't just confined to Canada. Fossil hunters have dug up the titanic shrooms all over the world, suggesting that it was probably the biggest life-form on land at a time when animal life was nothing but microbes and worms.