This is CBSI in the World. I'm John Batsuit with Thomas Halliday, paleontologist, and writing

wonderfully of other lands, his new book, A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds. We

now go to a part of the success of Agrarian Life, the root system. But did I know to pay

attention to it until Thomas's book? No. We go to the Devonian 470 million years ago, and

it's called the Michael Reisel. What is that Thomas? Well, Michael Reisel is composed of two parts.

Michael refers to fungus and the writer refers to roots. And it's essentially a way in which

fungi and plants interact with one another to extract the maximum benefit, really, from the

soil around them, from the earth around them. And really, this collaboration is crucial to the

move of life on to land. I mean, we tend to think, what we think about life appearing on land,

that there's some sort of hardy pioneer that suddenly emerges out of the sea and wanders up on

its fins. But really, that's not how life works. Life thrives in collaboration and the movement

of communities rather than individuals. And, and, lining in, in modern day Aberdeenshire, or, you

know, in the middle of the Caledonides Mountains in the Devonian, is one of these places where we

find evidence of these real tight interactions between fungi plants and animals that really

characterized the early move on to land. Without, without the assistance of fungi plants would not

have been able to develop roots and, and, and to exploit the, the mineral resources of the rocks

around them. And, and the plants themselves being able to extract energy from light, that's really

handy for the fungus as well. So then you get this collaboration, but you also get parasitism. We

have evidence from Rhinie of a fungi that are invading individual plant cells, which are then trying

to isolate those cells by hardening the surface or expanding them. And, and we get really a very

detailed and intimate look into the way that organisms have interacted on land for the last 400

million years. The atmosphere was oxygen poured. Did that contribute to the success of these

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