Tully's Monster

Tullimonstrum gregarium is the extinct species of soft-bodied vertebrate fish (not invertebrate!) found in the Carboniferous period of Illinois from rivers to nearby seas.

Etymology

Amateur collector Francis Tully found the first of these fossils in 1955 in a fossil bed known as the Mazon Creek formation. He took the strange creature to the Field Museum of Natural History, but paleontologists were stumped as to which phylum Tullimonstrum belonged. The species Tullimonstrum gregarium ("Tully's common monster"), as these fossils later were named, takes its genus name from Tully, whereas the species name, gregarium, means "common", and reflects its abundance. The term monstrum ("monster") relates to the creature's outlandish appearance and strange body plan.

Physical Appearance

This creature had a mostly cigar shaped body, with a triangular tail fin, two long stalked eyes, and a proboscis tipped with a mouth-like appendage.

Abilities

Used their own typically featured a long proboscis with up to eight small sharp teeth on each "jaw", with which it may have actively probed for small creatures and edible detritus in the muddy bottom.

Ecology

In 2016 a morphological study showed that Tullimonstrum may have been a basal vertebrate, and thus a member of the phylum Chordata, with one study suggesting Tullimonstrum may be closely related to modern lampreys. This affinity was attributed based on pronounced cartilaginous vertebral structures known as arcualia, a dorsal fin and asymmetric caudal fin, keratinous teeth, a single nostril, and tectal cartilages like in lampreys. McCoy raised the possibility that Tullimonstrum belongs to the ancestral group of lamprey, but it also has many features not found in Cyclostomes (lampreys and hagfishes). 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. Meaning it swam freely in the water and not clamped to a hard surface or benthic environment.

Many unique fossils have been found alongside Tullimonstrum like the jellyfish Essexella, the malacostracan Belotelson, the eurypterid Adelophthalmus mazonensis, horseshoe crabs, the ctenacanthiform fish Bandringa, and the coleoid cephalopod Jeletzkya.

Behavior

Coming soon

Distribution and Habitat

Examples of Tullimonstrum have been found only in the Essex biota, a smaller section of the Mazon Creek fossil beds of Illinois, United States. When Tullimonstrum was alive, Illinois was a mixture of ecosystems like muddy estuaries, marine environments, and rivers and lakes.

Movement Pattern: Nomadic
Individual Type: Solo
Population Trend: Stable
Population: 0
Locomotion: Aquatic
Habitat: All
Earth: Canada, United States

Tamed

Tullimonstrum gregarium cannot be tamed.

Lore

It was discovered in 1958 and first described scientifically in 1966 by Eugene Richardson and Francis Tully that this animal as invertebrate but in the past 60 years from now in 2010s, declared that this animal is a relative of lamprey because both gills and jaws, this mouth used for digging and forging in the riverbeds like snails hiding in first place and accorded by Victoria McCoy considered as vertebrate. This is Judas's animal.