Unproblematica

March 16, 2016 2:50 PM

The classification of Illinois's state fossil, the Tully monster, has been a mystery since its discovery in 1958. But now a team at Yale has determined that it is a vertebrate ancestor of the lamprey, after studying over a thousand fossils and noticing the presence of a notochord, among other distinctively vertebratey features. The (paywalled) Nature paper is here.
posted by theodolite (10 comments total)

Yay Tully Monster, our most underappreciated fossil!

Coastal elites just don't appreciate flyover vertebrates.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:58 PM on March 16, 2016 [9 favorites]

Thank you, thank you. :-)

I guess the Tully is no longer one of a kind...
posted by tully_monster at 3:34 PM on March 16, 2016 [8 favorites]

One the one hand, it is a lamprey, and they're sort of icky, but on the other, that is not a monster. THIS is a monster.
posted by BlueHorse at 3:40 PM on March 16, 2016

Relevant to that Nature link.
posted by deadbilly at 3:44 PM on March 16, 2016

Looks like a giant, two-eyed, vertebrate Opabinia
posted by kurumi at 3:50 PM on March 16, 2016

On reading this, I was certain this creature had had a Muppet named after it, and I was excited at how clever Henson and company were, but no.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:53 PM on March 16, 2016

Tullimonstrum was probably a free-swimming carnivore that dwelt in open marine water, and was occasionally washed to the near-shore setting in which it was preserved.

So the Tully Monster was a coastal elite when Illinois had an ocean! Check out my forthcoming Carboniferous romance bestseller, The Beaches of Mazon County.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 4:41 PM on March 16, 2016 [4 favorites]

They taste like frog legs.
posted by ambulocetus at 4:53 PM on March 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

I liked it when she sang "Lapti Nek."
posted by sonascope at 4:36 PM on March 17, 2016

Tully > Ulmo
posted by Sys Rq at 6:46 PM on March 17, 2016 [1 favorite]