Scientists categorize bizarre animal as vertebrate
By Roxanne Lee
Staff Writer
The mystery of the Tully monster has plagued the archaeologcial community for over half a century.
The Tully monster, whose scientific name is Tullimonstrum gregarium, was first discovered in Illinois coal mines in 1958, in the form of dozens of fossils. The Tully monster fossils were dated to be about 307 million years old. Fossil evidence showed that the creatures looked very bizarre, truly earning their nickname.
They were about a foot long, with nostrils on the sides of their bodies, eyes on a rigid lateral stalk, streamlined eel-like bodies, and most bizarrely, a trunk-like snout tipped with a claw-like appendage that acted as a mouth.
The Tully monster was so bizarre that scientists doubted for a long time what class of animal it was. Its wormlike body led some to conclude that it was related to an ancient segmented worm or aquatic slug. The monster has also been likened to nemerteans, polycheates, conodonts, and other classes of animal, and was even theorized to be a representative of an extinct phyla.
After an analysis of over 1,200 specimens in late 2015, a group of Yale scientists may have found the answer. Their new evidence, published this month in “Nature,” concludes that the alien-looking Tully monster was in fact a vertebrate.
Vertebrates are a subphylum of the phylum chordate, and as such share many qualifying characteristics with them. Chordates are defined as animals possessing a notochord, a hollow dorsal nerve chord, pharyngeal slits, an endostyle, and a post-anal tail for at least part of their life cycles.
Vertebrates are defined by these traits as well, but are also classified by their vertebral column, which is what forms when the notochord develops into bony vertebrae separated by plates.
Vertebrates are further specialized by being the only chordates to have a brain being part of their central nervous system. The Tully monster was determined to possess some of the key qualifying traits of vertebrates. It had gills and a notochord, which had previously been identified as a part of its gut. Its articulations within its proboscis and possession of multiple keratin tooth rows adjacent to its mouth also mark it as a vertebrate. It is theorized to be a relative to modern day lampreys, eel-like jawless fish of the order Petromyzontiformes.
Mystery still surrounds this strange fossil. Scientists are still unsure as to how the Tully monster swam, or how it ate with its strange mouth, but as it stands we know much more now than we did only a year prior.
One of the most incredible aspects of the recent discoveries surrounding the Tully monster is what it means for other undiscovered fossils. If vertebrates as unique and odd as the Tully monster can exist, the possible extinct and extant organisms yet to be discovered are limitless.
