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Million Pound Mushroom?


Million Pound Mushroom

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Hi everyone,

 

I'm a complete novice here, I purchased this strange rock as a souvenir when travelling through Mongolia and Russia if was bought from Nomads who forage the area close to lake Baikal on the Mongolia side of the border. It strangely drew me to it as it was sort of hidden under some other prettier looking rocks. The internet doesn't seem to say it's likely to be a mushroom, although as I'm sure you will agree from the photos  it's easy to believe it is.

 

I'd appreciate anyone expertise and thoughts anyone might have on Mushrooms or anything similar they have seen before?

Thank you for your time and interest.

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Welcome to the Forum.

 

Fossil mushrooms are very rare. We need to see some identifiable features unique to mushrooms such as gills. 

 

See paper that says that only ten mushroom fossils have been found. One was an impression/compression; the rest were in amber nodules. Verified authentic 3 D fossil mushrooms not in amber are unknown. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/115m-year-old-mushroom-oldest-fossilized-fungus-180963634/

 

I found a Fossil Forum post that shows a purported recent fossilized mushroom. The mushroom may have been placed in a calcium carbonate spring by a human.

http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/topic/96083-fungo/&tab=comments#comment-1061340

 

 

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Yes you are probably right, I'm a complete novice any advice on how to add these to the original post would be appreciated?

Thanks for the articles I will have a read.

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It looks geological wonder, to me, but how light is in weight comparable to a recent Ganoderma ?

Does it float in freshwater?

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Thanks DOS ammonite, item 15 and 16 look a little similar on the Fraas 1910 images, id say it's more like a button mushroom which I dont think would have gills showing, although it does look a bit amber like inside the stem and where the nipple on top is protruding. I'm curious to find out what it is even if it's not a mushroom. 

 

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8 hours ago, abyssunder said:

It looks geological wonder, to me, but how light is in weight comparable to a recent Ganoderma ?

Does it float in freshwater?

Hi, thank you for your interest, it's just under 0.5 ounces in weight and sinks like a stone in water.

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Being an open minded Scientist, I appreciate that mushroom fossils maybe non existent or that they are extremely rare, if we find reasons to believe they are not present in the fossil record then we surely do not focus on looking for them or justifying the possibility which further reduces that probability of finding them. Having done a bit of research, mushrooms contains potassium, copper, phosphorous and selenium, would these helpful facilitate fossilisation? Most organic lifeforms that decompose quickly seem to be carbon based, now with Mushrooms being high in Nitrogen would this be of any benefit in the process? Mushrooms I think also contain Chitin which in high concentrations is extremely stable and tough.This article suggests that Chitin can be fossilised? I appreciate any input and expertise to satisfy my curiosity. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep03497

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It may be helpful to note that fungi are actually fairly well (considering) represented in the fossil record. The fruiting bodies known as mushrooms, not so much.

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Let's not forget that button mushrooms (to which your concretion does indeed share a resemblance) are 92% water. Anybody who has ever fried up a large pan of mushrooms will attest to the significant shrinkage as the water is cooked out of them. :drool: Chitin, a polymer of glucosamine (a derivative of glucose) is more commonly known as the primary compound composing the exoskeletons of arthropods (insects and most famously crustaceans like crab and lobster shells). The chitin crystals are supplemented with calcium carbonate in these crustacean shells and is significantly more structurally sound than any chiton found in the cell walls of a soft bodied mushroom fruiting body. We have numerous examples of crustacean shells appearing in the fossil record. In fact, several of our members are very adept at preparing fossilized crabs from the concretions in which they are preserved. The few percent of chitin in the cell walls of mushrooms does not have the structural ability to do much more than help a mushroom (a fruiting body) hold its shape while spores are developed. If mushrooms were as hard and sturdy as crustacean shells, I doubt they would have found their way onto our menus. ;)

 

Concretions are wonderfully diverse shapes created by the accretive growth of smaller particles into solid items. Many concretions are formed around a nucleus upon which layers of growth form as the concretion increases in size. Simple 3D geometry requires that these concretions grow into spherical or cylindrical objects in many cases. Because many biological organisms are likewise subject to geometric factors it is not surprising that geological oddities often resemble biological items.

 

concmushroom-58b5abf95f9b586046a7a8bd.jpg    concretions_0.object_of_the_month.jpg    6ab546a614213108f3d7d5c392d9acdd.jpg

 

The image processing portion of our brains are well developed as we are a primarily visual species. This ability to see and recognize patterns in things we see has helped us as a social species to recognize friend from foe and to allow us to spot and hunt prey despite well developed camouflage colors. Often our pattern recognition hardware works overtime and allows us to recognize familiar shapes outside of the context where it would be appropriate. A hunter gatherer tribe out gathering mushrooms might spot a mushroom-like rock while searching but would know enough not to bring it back with the others for dinner. This phenomenon of recognizing familiar patterns and shapes out of context is called pareidolia and can be strong in some people. While it can provide a bit of fun in "seeing" bunny rabbits or dragons in cloud formations, or elephants or faces in the profiles of mountains or cliffs, it must be recognized for what it is so that it does not cloud our judgement when dealing with science.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

 

Your item is a concretion--a very cool looking concretion but still a concretion and nothing more. Those of us who have looked at more than our fair share of rocks while hunting for fossils, have seen a great diversity of concretions and other rock formations. Your item fits in very well with many other concretions very similar to it and it is not a great leap to see how a concretion could form with the resemblance to a button mushroom. To suggest that (solely on a slight resemblance) that your item is instead the first ever discovered example of a fossilized button mushroom fruiting body is obviously not the most likely explanation. To counter the argument of scientists having a bias against there being fossilized mushrooms and therefore are not finding them, there is a limit to being "open minded to the possibility". If we are willing to entertain any and all possibilities we would have a great career as a fiction writer but a short-lived career in science. Science works on deductive reasoning and while it may take us some time to understand what we are researching (and may require some insightful leaps), we cannot accept highly speculative claims without great proof.

 

To accept your item as a mushroom-shaped concretion we have to assume concretions exist and that they come in a variety of forms (we have copious proof of this). Then all we have to conclude is that one of these varied forms might bear a resemblance to a mushroom (a small step).

 

To accept that your item is a fossilized mushroom fruiting body we need to accept that mushrooms have not significantly changed their form from our common button mushroom in millions of years. We also have to accept that a mushroom found itself in the absolute ideal circumstances to be fossilized and preserved in its life state by some yet unknown means. It is a rare combination of events that must be present for any organism to be preserved in the fossil record. Soft bodied fossils are exquisitely rare and are usually found as simply two dimensional traces of the original organism. Outside of the unique preservation provided by items encased in amber and a few cases where "petrified" dinosaur fossils have been found preserving the shape and texture of the outer skin, these types of fossils are vanishingly rare.

 

Occam's Razor is a problem-solving principle that helps us to decide between competing hypotheses. While it is not a logical principle that allows us to falsify one hypothesis over another, it does say that we should choose the hypothesis that is simpler and requires the fewest assumptions as this will be more testable using the scientific method. While scientific advancement is often made (by great minds) using intuition and imagination (think Einstein here), that sort of intuition is different from simply blind belief that something should be possible.

 

You mention being an "open minded scientist" and you need to be open to the probability that your item is a very cool looking mushroom-shaped concretion and not a unique fossilized button mushroom fruiting body. Mushroom shaped rocks are actually quite common--especially if you happen to be in Mushroom Rock State Park in Kansas:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_Rock_State_Park

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

 

 

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Good response Digit, thank you for your insight and knowledge. I most certainly am open minded to my item more probably being a concretion, on the flip side rare things are less probable of being found and highly probably formed under extremely special circumstances hence their rarity. I can see the resemblance to the concretion images and point being made. I'm aware of pareidolia although I wouldn't particularly want to spell it after a few pints! Given you have seen many concretions it's also only a small step to come to the conclusion that concretions are the norm for someone could be seen rather than the extremely rare mushroom option, could it not? Visual identification alone to verify or dismiss a possibility is therefore flawed. The huner gatherer would not have just left the mushroom rock and took mushrooms merely by sight would he? I take your point about the amount of Chitin present in a mushroom and 92% as fact, however that raises a question of shrinkage during fossilisation. Could Organic material, or dry up before fossilisation? If so would MPM be 8% of it's original size? Should I be calling it the giant million pound mushroom?! Whilst we agree Einstein probably did use intuition and imagination, he must have had total belief in order to evolve his theories. Given no one else had them, would this not constitute blind belief? Did he listen and take heed of conventional thinking person who doubted his thoughts to stop pursuing possibilities through to the conclusion? He therefore must have had blind belief in the possibility of his thoughts in achieving what others would call the impossible, unless he could categorically prove otherwise unless he just knew? (highly improbable).  Humour me here, intuition lead me to the stone and imagination led me here, if I'm proven to be right then I will change my username here to Fossil Einstein! Evolutionary change is a fair point, my shrinkage theory would suggest an evolutionary downsizing over time. Now is that possible, are there any other examples of this happening? With all due respect the evolutionary comment would also assume its actually a prehistoric button mushroom, truth is we dont know what type of mushroom it was and what it could evolve into yet (and we may never) as mushrooms have not been found in the fossil record often enough to determine a theory as far back as is theorised that mushrooms have lived for. Your response raises the fact that what I'd really like to know is that if you throw conventional thinking theory and debate aside, is there a bonefide scientific way to test the now "potentially giant million pound mushroom" to find out and determine exactly what it is for sure? 

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Some kind of tomography/CT scan machine might be able to peer “inside.” If it lacks mycological structure, then it is not a mushroom. I would say take it to your nearest earth sciences department and have them look at it in hand.

 

As for shrinkage, I would think significant desiccation would result in displaying wrinkling of the surface, which I’m not seeing here.

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29 minutes ago, Million Pound Mushroom said:

is there a bonefide scientific way to test the now "potentially giant million pound mushroom" to find out and determine exactly what it is for sure? 

I think the best way to determine what you have is to take it to a museum so they can physically inspect it. However I think, as others here believe, that you have a cool looking concretion. :) 

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If you are a reverse-skeptic and wish concrete proof that your item is a common (but interestingly shaped) concretion rather than a unique (in the true sense of that word) fossilized mushroom (fungal fruiting body), then your best means to do so is exactly as Randy so succinctly stated above--get it to a rock saw and slice it open. The lack of any internal structures resembling any part of a mushroom will have to be your proof--at the expense of sacrificing a really cute mushroom-shaped concretion.

 

I would not characterize Einstein as a person with "blind faith" in any of the conclusions that his calculations led him. He was able to think of space-time in a novel way which opened up many testable hypothesis (gravitational lensing) but he hated the concept of black holes though his calculations led him to postulate their existence (much later proved and recently "photographed"). Science does not work on blind faith it works on testable predictions.
 

36 minutes ago, Million Pound Mushroom said:

if I'm proven to be right then I will change my username here to Fossil Einstein!

If you are proven to be right and you have found an impossibly preserved petrified shroom, I will not only change my TFF username to "Fossil Einstein" but I'll legally change my real name to the same. It may be an interesting thought experiment (akin to Einstein's Gedankenexperiment) to consider what a fossilized mushroom might look like were it to be preserved in some manner but to seriously put any effort or thought into proving that your item is in fact such a fabled mushroom is not a productive use of time. Assuming that paleontologists have not found fossil unicorns for lack of trying is not how science works.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

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Even without cutting, if this was a mushroom at some point because it has the current appearance of one, then there would be other mushroom features preserved with equal uniqueness.  I don't think there is evidence of those features, but you can make up close observations.  Your item reminds me of some kind of worn, botryoidal silicate rock.

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Interesting find...I like the suggestions from the last 4 posts about having someone look at it and do some tests and examine its inside. I agree it does look boytryoidal to me as well. Would be interesting to have the museum folks perform some simple mineral tests...relative hardness, specific gravity and check for streak color if any...

 

Keep us informed. 

Regards, Chris 

 

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3 hours ago, Randyw said:

Cut it open

Don't. It's a nice specimen.

 

I think it's a concretion for a few reasons, and not a mushroom. The stipe is off to one side, but there is no evidence that it was severed prior to preservation. Shouldn't it be centered below the cap? The hollow in the stipe, and the way the stipe terminates is not typical of mushrooms. The angle at which the annulus is attached to the stipe and cap seems odd, appearing to be near parallel to the stipe on its flat surface, as a flat ring would fit on one's finger. Also, for a mushroom this well preserved I would expect to see at least some of the volva still attached.

 

 

Mark.

 

Fossil hunting is easy -- they don't run away when you shoot at them!

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