Laura Cooper

Thank you!

Here's the top view of the hat, with baby hippos and Prototaxites!

Bee-hunting beetles are the first animals known to fake the smell of flowers Study of parasitic blister beetles reveals a new form of chemical deception

Bee-hunting beetles are the first animals known to fake the smell of flowers | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

Wow high impact research!

Thank you Hady!!

Thanks to Sandy for excellent supervision, to the very supportive lab group (who are also very creative with making my hat!) and the examiners for their rigorous questioning!

Paul Kenrick, Laura Cooper and Sean McMahon

Sandy Hetherington and Laura Cooper holding a bottle of fizz with balloons

The very first Dr from the group! Congratulations Laura @transitionalform.bsky.social @instmolplantsci.bsky.social for passing your viva yesterday!! 🎉🎉
Thanks so much @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social and Paul Kenrick for acting as examiners

YouTube video by multiverses Life on Mars? how a muddy Scottish pond adds to the case #astrobiology #science #mars

An excellent explainer of our new preprint from James Robinson of the multiverses.xyz podcast!

Thanks for sharing our work!

Oh thank you, I missed that my alt text had not uploaded properly!

The extent of the fine branching is broadly similar, but the spots involve multiple larger tubes feeding into and are found throughout the region of fine branching, so unlike the way that (as far as I'm aware) AM fungi branch from a single hypha. But it's a good analogy as an exchange structure.

Thanks for sharing our work!

Mysterious Giants Could Be a Whole New Kind of Life That No Longer Exists Ever since their discovery more than 165 years ago, massive fossilized structures left by an organism known as Prototaxites have proven impossible to categorize.

Important message here: 4 billion years of evolution was not teleological. It was not _meant_ to get to us or our world.

It was doing it own thing in its own time
#Biodiversity
www.sciencealert.com/mysterious-g...

Reconstruction of the early Carboniferous tree fern with false trunk on the left (from Hueber & Galtier 2002) and polished section of a piece of false trunk on the right (photo G Galtier) .

For this #FernFriday and #FossilFriday, let's look at Symplocopteris wyatti, an early fern from the Carboniferous of Australia 🌿⛏️. This #fern formed trees with "false trunks" up to 50 cm in diameter, composed of several branching stems intertwined with petioles and roots #paleobotany 🧵1/3

The World Tonight - President Zelensky slams Europeans for being in ‘Greenland mode’ - BBC Sounds At Davos, the Ukrainian president attacked his European allies for their passivity.

It’s been amazing to receive so much interest in the Prototaxites paper!
An absolute highlight was talking about the work last night to Jane Hill on BBC R4, The World Tonight
The Prototaxites segment starts at 33 mins 👇👇
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Thank you!

It's been great seeing everyone enjoying the paper and the thread! Just to add:
1 ) It's pronounced "Proto-tax-eye-tees" (not that it would mind being mispronounced)
2 ) Yes it does look like giant penis, but more interesting is that we don't know why or how it got to looking like a giant penis.

There's no evidence that our sample is a symbiosis, the spots connect to the surrounding tubes and the are chemically the same as the rest of the organism, and there hasn't been good evidence from other samples for a symbiosis, so at the moment we can exclude it being colonial or a symbiosis

There's not strong evidence for it's growth orientation either upright or on the ground, and its traditionally reconstructed as upright as they don't have evidence of being compressed on one side like it would be if it was growing along the ground (and there's not really evidence for branching).

There is a theory that Prototaxites got eaten to death by bugs, but that's probably not the only reason they died out

My idea is that ones like ours that had thinner walls were spongy like fried tofu, and the big ones with thick walls were more woody, but as for the actual taste... 🤷‍♀️

Towering Prototaxites ruled Earth before trees—and they may have been a form of life entirely new to science. Recent research argues that the ancient organism doesn’t fit into our existing taxonomic h... TikTok video by Scientific American

You can also enjoy the TikTok version of this story here: www.tiktok.com/@scientifica...

Mystery tower fossils may be a whole new kind of life Towering Prototaxites ruled Earth before trees—and they may have been a form of life entirely new to science

Meet the mysterious Prototaxites: “No matter what...it’s something weird doing its own thing,” one scientist says of the fossil

Oxygen-free metabolism in the bird inner retina supported by the pecten - Nature While the photoreceptor outer segments in the bird outer retina have access to oxygen, the inner retina operates under chronic anoxia, supported by anaerobic glycolysis in the retinal neurons.

Birds have a thick retina devoid of blood vessels - so how do they ensure sufficient oxygen availability?
They don't - neurons rely on glycolysis, metabolizing glucose released from the pecten.

Insane new study that includes comparative data on lizards and crocs.🧪

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Fossil reveals secrets of entirely different form of life no longer found on Earth Fossil reveals secrets of entirely different form of life no longer found on Earth

Fossil reveals secrets of entirely different form of life no longer found on Earth

Prototaxites fossils are structurally and chemically distinct from extinct and extant Fungi Prototaxites fossils are distinct from Fungi, suggesting that they represent an extinct lineage of eukaryotic life.

It was a joy to contribute to this paper led by @sandyheth.bsky.social, Corentin Loron and Laura Cooper. We show the Devonian fossil, Prototaxites, is not a fungus but is in fact an organism from an as yet unknown extinct eukaryotic lineage.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

@dcu-lsi.bsky.social

Oh yep sure, I can message you!

Very cool paper and thread exploring earth's ancient giant fungi-not-fungi
"the first giant organisms on the Earth’s surface were not closely related to anything alive today. But despite its strangeness, in its time Prototaxites would have had an important role"

Aberdeenshire fossil dating back 410 million years joins museum collection Researchers say the fossil found in Aberdeenshire is neither plant nor fungus as previously thought.

Really exciting to get some press coverage on our Prototaxites paper @instmolplantsci.bsky.social @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Thank you!!