It is not everyday that a scientist gets to identify an entirely new type of life. Not just a newly discovered plant or animal, but something dissimilar enough to anything else that they believe a new category entirely is warranted.

Well, that is what scientists from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland are pushing for in a new paper (not yet peer reviewed).

Don’t worry though. This unique lifeform is not going to attack people or cause any issues. In fact, it no longer exists. The lifeform in question is called the prototaxites, and it lived about 400 million years ago. The fossils of it were first found in the 1800’s and since then, scientists have been trying to figure out exactly what it is.

The tubelike fossils were first thought to be tree trunks, but that was quickly ruled out. Some scientists, including William Carruthers from Canada (back in 1872) even argued that the name should be changed from prototaxites (which means first yew) to nematophycus (which means stringy algae).

The more research that is done on these fossils, the less it seems we know.

Stanford botanist Kevin Boyce did an interview with New Scientist and he believes that there isn’t any place within the various classifications of lifeforms where it fits in. He said:

“Maybe it is a fungus, but whether a fungus or something else entirely, it represents a novel experiment with complex multicellularity that is now extinct and does not share a multicellular common ancestor with anything alive today.”

To add more to the mystery, scientists do not know why this plant…fungus…algae…or whatever it is went extinct. It has been gone for millions of years though, and researchers are still trying to figure it out.

While there is a lot of disagreement throughout the scientific community about what exactly the prototaxites is, most everyone can agree that it is an interesting mystery that we will hopefully someday be able to solve. For now, let’s just say that whatever it is, it is fascinating.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about the mysterious “pyramids” discovered in Antarctica. What are they?