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In July 2017, an image made its way across social media, purporting to be an ancient, petrified trunk of what was once a huge, atavistic tree: This photograph is one of many purportedly showing giant ancient tree trunks. However, there's more to the story than simply the marvel of how big trees supposedly once were. According to some flat earth conspiracy theorists (a school of thought that is inexplicably becoming popular again), images such as these serve as evidence that the earth was once populated by massive trees and that our current forests are merely the leftover shrubs. Inverse summarized the theory in a September 2016 article: (It's not clear what gigantic forests might have to do with a flat earth.) The viral photograph actually shows a large mesa in Tunisia called Jugurtha Tableland or Jugurtha's Table. Although the image may superficially resemble a tree trunk, the structure was actually formed by erosion: The giant trees of flat-earth theory are impossibly big. The tallest tree on earth, Hyperion, only measures 380.3 feet (115.9 meters) tall, about 4,900 feet short of a single mile, and well short of the ten- to forty-mile mark purportedly set by these ancient (and fictional) giant trees.
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