Unproblematica
March 16, 2016 2:50 PM Subscribe
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.
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]
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
posted by BlueHorse at 3:40 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
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]
posted by ambulocetus at 4:53 PM on March 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
Tully > Ulmo
posted by Sys Rq at 6:46 PM on March 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Sys Rq at 6:46 PM on March 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
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Coastal elites just don't appreciate flyover vertebrates.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:58 PM on March 16, 2016 [9 favorites]