Tully monster

In the 20th century in Illinois, Peabody Coal stripped a shale overburdern containing the famous Pennsylvanian Mazon Creek iron (concretion) nodules. Around ~1200 of these contained ‘Tully Monsters’, a completely bizarre early vertebrate.

Tullimonstrum

New 3D imaging technology has been used to try to classify the Tully monster, a strange, soft-bodied creature that has been baffling palaeontologists for more t

Last year, two papers in the journal Nature sought to resolve what group of animals Tully monster fossils belong to; both papers concluded the vertebrates. Last week, Dr. Lauren Sallan and colleagues published a paper in the journal Palaeontology, "The Tully Monster is Not a Vertebrate..." And that's okay; it is part of how science works. It's quite normal for new ideas, based

The 300-million-year-old enigma looks like a sci-fi squid with claw. Scientists have finally figured out its place on the tree of life.

James O’Donoghue (UK) The Tully Monster is a mysterious 307 million-year-old marine animal known only from the famous Mazon Creek fossil locality in Illinois. Its body plan is unlike any othe…

The Tully Monster, an oddly configured sea creature with teeth at the end of a narrow, trunk-like extension of its head and eyes that perch on either side of a long, rigid bar, has finally been identified. A Yale-led team of paleontologists has determined that the 300-million-year-old animal — which grew to only a foot long — was a vertebrate, with gills and a stiffened rod (or notochord) that supported its body. It is part of the same lineage as the modern lamprey. “I was first intrigued by…

The Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, New York who created the Ammonoid Cephalopod Plushie, has come up with a new plushie of the

Artist’s impression of Tullimonstrum, and The Tullimonstrum fossil. Ghedoghedo/Wikimedia Every now and again, scientists discover fos...

Tully Monster on shores of Loch Ness