Dinosaurs May Have Taken LSD
Amber preserves a blade of grass with hallucinogenic fungus from 100 million years ago.
We think of the Cretaceous period - 145 to 66 million years ago - as the time when dinosaurs were dominant on land. But new groups of mammals and birds were appearing, and the abundant conifers were having to make room for flowering plants and grasses.
The oldest evidence of grass ever has recently been studied by Dr. George Poinar, a paleobiologist from Oregon State University. A grass spikelet - the part that yields seeds - was perfectly preserved in a 100-million-year-old amber fossil found in Myanmar.
The top of the spikelet was infected by a fungus known as ergot, which still affects grasses today. Because the ergot fungus known today is associated with the hallucinogen, lysergic acid diethylamide - LSD - scientists wonder if it had any effect on grazing dinosaurs at that time.
Related Links
- Paper in Palaeodiversity
- Oregon State University release
- Live Science story
- Discovery News story