The Story of Tully Monster – A Mystery from the History of Illinois
In a sizzling summer of 1955, Francis Tully set off on a fossil collecting jaunt some fifty miles south of Chicago. Till that time, he was utterly clueless about the fact that his name was about to be written in the golden words in paleontological history.
Tully was a pipefitter by profession, but he was passionate about collecting antiquities. His passion compelled him to shift through the coal miners of Mazon Creek, where he found two rocks holding something jaw-droppingly incredible between them. It was an obese, one-foot-long earthworm with a trunk and a spade-shaped tail.
Francis Tully found it utterly strange as he realized none of the books had ever mentioned something about this, nor does any museum or rock clubhouse such a wonder. He immediately took it to the Field Museum in Chicago. Eugene Richardson, the curator of fossil invertebrates, noticed this unusual piece. The unique structure of the creature didn’t allow him to relate it to any of the major animal groups. Probably here, the tale of Tully monsters began!
Tully Monster – The Honored Acceptance…
It was 31st August 1989 when the state governor of Illinois, James Thomson, signed legislation that made the Tullimonstrum Gregarium, alias Tully monster, the official state fossil. In 1966, Paleontologist Eugene Richardson named the species after its discoverer, Francis Tully.
The Oddity is Weird!
The Tully monster fossils are so bizarre that their body plans don’t match any other living animals or plants on the planet. Tully looks like a superficial slug. But, where one could expect its mouth to be, the creature features an extended, thin appendage that looks more like a pair of grasping claws. Then comes its eyes that protrude outwards from its body on stalks.
This once-living creature is undoubtedly one of the most unique ever found. At least, the two rows of conical teeth and the rigid eye bars carry the resonances of the new generation of science fiction movies. The narrow dorsal fin, a vertical tail fin, and strange 14inches long body add more to its exceptional approach.
The unimaginably strange outlook of Tully has left scientists in doubt – is it a vertebrate or it’s an invertebrate? Even after countless attempts to classify the Tully monster, no one could reach a logical conclusion.
Different Opinions of Different Studies
A 2016 research claimed that this extinct animal should be classified as a vertebrate as its eyes contain melanosomes – the pigment granules arranged by shape and size in the same way as the eyes of vertebrates.
However, another theory overruled this logic as a few invertebrates like octopus and squid also hold melanosomes arranged by shape and size, just like Tully’s eyes. Besides, some studies found that the chemistry of Tully’s eyes has more similarities with the invertebrates as the ratio of zinc to copper matches more with the animals without a backbone.
It is believed that Tully used to share its shallow marine environment with different fishes, horseshoe crabs, sharks, shrimps, and jellyfish. It is used to gather nutrition by grasping things with the snout or proboscis and scraping bits off with the help of the tongue. However, what it ate is still unknown, and it’s also yet to reveal if it was a predator or scavenger.
For years, the prehistoric whatsit of Tully remained nothing but a frustrating enigma. In addition, its weirdness pushed it to skirt the edges of myth. The height of such a myth went so far that a few cryptozoologists started believing that the legendary Loch Ness Monster was a bigger version of Tully.
For some, Tully was a soft spot.
Some paleontologists like Victoria McCoy (Yale University) say that they hold a soft spot for Tully as the creature stood out in miles with its distinctive look and feel. Unlike other animals, the guts of a Tully monster appeared a bit differently. A lightly colored, flattened structure ran from the eyestalks to the tail end. It’s exceptional as the gut usually doesn’t continue past the end of the tail in both mollusks and vertebrates.
Different studies and pieces of research have found that like lampreys and hagfish, Tully also had a notochord, which again reflects a connection of Tully with the vertebrate families.
How do we identify Tully Monster?
Hail technology! A method called synchrotron elemental mapping that illuminates an animal’s physical features helps identify Tully, and McCoy and many other paleontologists have used this method to find out Tully’s real identity. However, it’s still an oddity in any group, and hence we can say that if you take it as a mollusk, it’s a weird one, or if you take it as a vertebrate, then also it’s a strange vertebrate.
Tully monster – A crisp summary
To sum up everything, we can say that the Tully monster is an enigmatic creature that used to live on our planet around 307 million years ago. The muddy estuarine environment of the carboniferous period was ideal for their survival, and the Mazon Creek fossil beds of northeastern Illinois were the home to these strange creatures.
Science is yet to define its category, and it has been interpreted in a myriad of ways like a worm, mollusk, arthropod, and even fish. Some studies say it is a relative of contemporary lampreys – the blood-sucking fish with tooth suction cups propelled by sinuous. However, maybe Tully is a lamprey at heart, but its appearance doesn’t render a feel like the same.
Wrapping Up…
Found by the dozens, these approximately 300 million-year-old fossils of Tully monsters kept in the museum of Illinois have earned a kind of celebrity status. The unfamiliar structure of these creatures is, at a time, terrifying and awe-inspiring. However, the irony is, the reason behind this terror is also unidentified. Those conical-shaped teeth of Tully certainly don’t help, and the largest ever Tully monster found to date is only about a foot long.
This indicates that they wouldn’t probably include humans in their lunch or dinner menu even if they were alive today. However, were they fierce enough to attack? Well, just like its category, the answer to this question is also undefined.
Though it may have some modern relatives, scientists are still unable to identify them. The paleontologists find a different appeal in them, and probably this is the reason behind its achievement of being considered the official state fossil of Illinois!
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