When you realize the fungus&#x27; primary intent was to convince the fly to land in amber ...

Thaw, The Thing (overt), Andromeda Strain, Deep Rising (overt)

The Last Park - because zombie Jurassic creatures is the last thing this world needs.

The Last of Them.Shivers …

This gives the whole raptor clicker training Chris Pratt did a whole new interpretation.

Next iteration: Jurassic Park + The Last of Us

&quot;The BBC show we were ripping off (for &#x27;The Last of Us&#x27;) is Planet Earth, where they talked about the cordiceps fungus and how it affects insects.&quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;venturebeat.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;08&#x2F;06&#x2F;the-last-of-us-creators-inspirations&#x2F;view-all&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;venturebeat.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;08&#x2F;06&#x2F;the-last-of-us-creators-i...</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bombaylitmag.com&#x2F;contribution&#x2F;the-cordyception&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bombaylitmag.com&#x2F;contribution&#x2F;the-cordyception&#x2F;</a>In my imagined world of Halahala, silent stories have occupied prime real estate since 2005. I think of them like music without lyrics, jazz-like in the experience. The Cordyception is another riff on Halahala’s staple theme of nature, sustainability and our obsession with a certain ladder. An Attenborough documentary led me to these marvellous fungi called Cordyceps and the rest is pure Halahala. The fungi infect and take over specific insect-hosts – body and mind – commanding them to a high vantage point for dispersing spores.I swear I drew this before the pandemic—Appupen

Sounds like a more promising direction than what the Jurrasic Park franchise is doing currently.

Zombie fungi pulled from amber is the makings of a movie ;)

Apparently set to become a movie, starring Liam Neeson: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cold_Storage_(film)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cold_Storage_(film)</a>

&quot;Cold Storage&quot; by American screenwriter David Koepp comes to mind, a comedy splatter novel. I don&#x27;t usually read such books, but this one was funny and entertaining.

Closest you can come today is probably a tree fern. I&#x27;ve got a Dicksonia antarctica in my living room under grow lights. It&#x27;s a neat plant.

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&#x27;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.

Well, bamboo comes to mind as a really weird tree. It&#x27;s not a tree, but it&#x27;s the size of one..

Pot plants have no bark and a green trunk and can reach heights of like 12 ft.

&gt; prehistoric treesI suppose you are actually talking of a time preceding prehistory by a fair lot!

&gt; visited the national history museumwhat nation?

which museum? Do you mean the Natural History Museum in New York?

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&#x27;d love to see something like that now.

Fascinating. Do you have a link to that, or the name of that species?

My favourite tree evolution thing is the forests in the Galapagos being evolved from dandelion seeds blown in on the wind from South America.

Trees are barely a firm category of plant at all. It&#x27;s basically just tall plants with woody stems. Plants can gain and lose woody stems without too much trouble (relatively speaking, over evolutionary time). So any time a plant species currently growing soft stems can benefit from being really tall, they have a good chance of evolving into &quot;trees&quot;.

Not OP, but:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eukaryotewritesblog.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;05&#x2F;02&#x2F;theres-no-such-thing-as-a-tree&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eukaryotewritesblog.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;05&#x2F;02&#x2F;theres-no-such-th...</a>

One example is oak trees being more closely related to tulips than to pine trees.(Tulips and oak trees are both angiosperms, flowering plants, and share a common angiosperm ancestor. Pine trees on the other hand are gymnosperms.)

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

Mullberry plants are weird. They&#x27;re happy to exist as a small shrub or a 60ft tree, depending on how they&#x27;re cultivated.One of the largest trees I&#x27;ve ever personally seen was a mullberry on some long-abandoned land adjoining mine. But they&#x27;re also a bush?

These aren&#x27;t necessarily related to today&#x27;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 evolved at least 100 times.

Fungi likely precedes the Dinos by 100&#x27;s millions of years

&quot;You want Zombie Apocalypse?! Because THAT&#x27;s how you get Zombie Apocalypse!&quot;

Everyone is understandably referencing the Last of Us but Common Side Effects deserves a mention as well.I for one welcome our new mushroom overlords.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Common_Side_Effects" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Common_Side_Effects</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;3hRYHX8bLVA?si=Jz03JZO1gTyjAQuH" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;3hRYHX8bLVA?si=Jz03JZO1gTyjAQuH</a>

Did a fungus write this? That’ll just spread it wider. (cf. The Genius Plague by David Walton)

&quot;Bomb the city and everything in it&quot;

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