Mystery Of The Homely Tully Monster Solved — Ancient Creature Linked To This Hideous Fish

The story of Illinois’ bizarre and alien-like Tully monster is a mysterious one.

For decades, paleontologists had no idea what it was. Due to its unnerving appearance, they theorized it was a worm or a swimming slug. One guy even theorized that the Tully monster was a mini-version of the Loch Ness monster, CNN added.

After extensive research, however, the Tully monster has been identified with much rejoicing from paleontologists. And no, it’s not related to Nessie.

The Tully monster was first found in 1955 by a pipefitter named Francis Tully, National Geographic reported. He spotted the strange creature’s remains in a fossil bed called the Mazon Creek formation while scouring a scrap heap from a coal mine.

He tried to figure out what it was on his own, but came up empty, he recalled in a 1987 interview.

“None of the books had it. I’d never seen it in museums or at rock clubs. So I brought it to Chicago to the Field Museum to see if they could figure out what the devil it was.”

The famed "Tully monster" has just been traced on the human tree of life: https://t.co/8OVQ0zhyDF

— National Geographic (@NatGeo) March 17, 2016

To describe that ancient creature as homely would be an understatement. It had a “shovel-shaped tail, a trunk-like snout tipped with a claw-like mouth, and eyes affixed to the ends of a rigid bar.” Francis was certainly confounded by it. So he took the fossil to the Field Museum in Chicago and stumped scientists there.

“No one recognized the creature,” recalled paleontologist Eugene Richardson in 1966. “We could not even decide what phylum to put it in, and that was a serious and embarrassing matter.”

Illinois’ coalmines were filled with the fossils of the Tully monster, embedded in 300-million-year-old rock, but the mystery of the creature’s identity continued to stump pretty much everyone. That didn’t stop Field Museum researchers and scientists from the Illinois State Geological Survey to ask legislators to designate the Tully Monster as its state symbol, however.

By 1989, the alien-like animal earned its state fossil status among 40 others.

Meanwhile, paleontologists settled on a decent theory about the Tully monster: it was a spineless invertebrate like an ancient worm, arthropod, or mollusk. But in 2014, Victoria McCoy of the University of Leicester, who declared that the Tully Monster “looks like an alien,” joined forces with the Field Museum to identify the creature once and for all.

The 'Tully Monster' mystery has been solved >> https://t.co/TOGesxJWxR pic.twitter.com/yVtLJx25GK

— Discovery (@Discovery) March 17, 2016

They examined thousands of the homely fossils and something immediately stood out: a light-colored band running from its snout to the tip of its tail. Once considered a digestive tract, the scientists soon determined that they were looking at the rubbery tube that surrounds primitive spinal cords in some vertebrates.

Once the backbone appeared, everything began to fall into place. Before long, researchers declared that the Tully monster is an ancient cousin of the modern lamprey, the first animal with backbones to evolve.

A hole in the Tully monster’s middle corresponded to the lamprey’s nostrils, meaning the former could smell. They even spotted the outline of its brain.

“It was about as smart as a modern lamprey,” said McCoy. “Not exactly genius level, but enough to survive.”

A lamprey is about as disgusting as a Tully monster. The jawless fish has a funnel-like mouth covered in sharp teeth and sucks blood. The Tully monster isn’t exactly like that, with some unique traits of its own — like the bar on its head capped with beady eyes.

Now, paleontologists get to undertake an even bigger mission: figuring out how the Tully monster moved, ate, and lived. Paul Mayer, who helped make this discovery, seems excited to learn more about the ugly ancient animal.

“It would be fascinating to watch it swim around. How does a Tully monster make its living? We don’t know.”