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09-05-2003, 06:45 PM

The message
from (Nick Maclaren) contains these words:

| I know they're not animals!

Paradoxically, you are nearly wrong :-)

DNA evidence confirms that fungi are slightly more closely related
to animals than either is to plants. The bichemists had suspected
that for decades. So you could reasonably classify them as animals,
if you move the division up a bit!

Since they have retieved viable fungal spores from what amounts to
space, which means they must to some degree be resistant to cosmic rays
and in our solar system, UV light and infra red, it has been suggested
that fungi may have originated extra-terrestrially.

I think this is fanciful though because of the immense distances
involved, and unless the universe is a lot older than scientists now
believe, any ET origin must have been within our own little solar
system. I don't dismiss the idea out of hand, however unlikely I believe
it to be though.

--
Tony
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