But it’s not, and there are thousands of fossils of it. Tully’s Monster, one of the mysteries of paleontology that I had not heard of until today, gets another addition to its family of controversial deductions concerning its nature:
A bizarre ancient creature that looks like a sci-fi reject may actually have been a backboned animal related to fish.
The claim relies on chemical analysis of fossils of the creature. However, other palaeontologists remain cautious.
The animal is called Tullimonstrum gregarium, or simply the Tully Monster. It lived around 300 million years ago in shallow waters covering what is now Illinois. There are thousands of good fossils, all from one formation called Mazon Creek. …
When soft tissue fossilises, chemicals like proteins degrade in predictable ways, says Wiemann. “We can still extract biological information,” she says. Crucially, invertebrates and chordates remain chemically distinct.
[Jasmina Wiemann of Yale University, a specialist in chemical analysis of fossils], [Victoria McCoy at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee] and their colleagues studied 32 samples from Mazon Creek rocks. Known chordates and invertebrates were readily distinguished, and the Tully Monster grouped with the chordates.
But …
[Maria McNamara at University College Cork in Ireland] has studied metals in the Tully Monster’s eyes. These suggested it was a cephalopod: an invertebrate group that includes octopuses and squid. “Why are the organic and inorganic components of the chemical signature showing these conflicting results?” she asks. [NewScientist, 9 May 2020, paywall]
What’s all the hubbub about, you wonder?
Two Tully’s Monsters, passing in the night.
Wikipedia
That funky crossbar? That’s right, just like a hammerhead shark – eye stalks. Did they move? You’d think they’d have to if they were to be useful – but primitive critters were not necessarily refined.
If I had a fossil of one of these, it’s go right up on the wall. So bizarrely cool. It looks like some of my software designs, in retrospect.
