LONDON: Picture the wild-eyed unpredictability of a college kid tripping on LSD. Now compound that image with the power of a 100-foot-long, chisel-toothed dinosaur. A crazed, deadly creature tearing through prehistoric Pangea on a bad trip.
If Hollywood scripted Dinosaurs on Acid, it could steal the record for camp currently held by Sharknado. But this theory is better than a script—it’s a peer-reviewed report published in a scientific journal.
Last year, Dr. George Poinar was sent what appeared to be a standard sample of amber fossil that German scientist Joerg Wunderlich had purchased in Myanmar in 2001. Encased within it was a specimen he assumed to be a flower. But Poinar, a paleo-entomologist at Oregon State University, knew instantly what it was: a blade of grass topped by a distinctive fungus.
Now this may not sound thrilling to us plebeians, but Poinar was “absolutely amazed.” Until this fell into his lap no fossil containing the fungus called ergot had ever been found, and it was previously unproven that grass even existed during that early period of Earth’s history. Estimated to be between 97 and 110 million years old, this was the oldest ever grass specimen and likely evidence that the herbivore dinosaurs were consuming plants with hallucinogenic properties.
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