Dinosaurs Were Probably Tripping on Hallucinogens Most of the Time

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Big news on the paleontology front: Researchers from Oregon State University have discovered a perfectly preserved sample of grass trapped in 100-million-year-old amber in Myanmar, by far the oldest of its kind. But even more curious was a small growth attached to the grass, which the team discovered was quite similar to the modern-day ergot fungus.

Ergot is famous for causing severe symptoms like hallucinations, convulsions, gangrene, mania and psychosis — and it seems that one of its earliest ancestors was flourishing during the heyday of the dinosaurs in the early- to mid-Cretaceous period.

Thus, the last thing some unfortunate herbivores may have seen before they died was a whirling, fractal blur of raptor claws or carnosaur teeth.

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Fossilized feces (coprolites) have already established that sauropod dinosaurs ate grass at least as early as the late Cretaceous period (71-65 million years ago). The newly discovered fungus, Palaeoclaviceps parasiticus, might have gone down the gullet along with it.

"It seems like ergot has been involved with animals and humans almost forever, and now we know that this fungus literally dates back to the earliest evolution of grasses," OSU scientist George Poinar Jr. said in a statement on the university's website. "This is an important discovery that helps us understand the timeline of grass development, which now forms the basis of the human food supply in such crops as corn, rice or wheat. But it also shows that this parasitic fungus may have been around almost as long as the grasses themselves, as both a toxin and natural hallucinogen."

"There's no doubt in my mind that it would have been eaten by sauropod dinosaurs," he says, "although we can't know what exact effect it had on them."

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