The most thorough study yet of a mysterious creature that lived 300 million years ago has ruled that it had no bones after all.
– AKA the Tully monster – has confounded scientists. Studies have variously found it was a vertebrate, or an"We believe that the mystery of it being an invertebrate or vertebrate has been solved,", at the University of Tokyo at the time of the study, now at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Japan.
Numerous specimens of fossilized Tully monsters have been found since fossil hunter Francis Tully stumbled across the first in the Mazon Creek fossil bed in Illinois in 1955, and they paint a picture of a truly bizarre marine beastie. Measuring up to 15 centimeters in length, the Tully monster had a body with cuttlefish-like fins on its tail, eyes protruding from stalks like a bar across its forehead, and a long, thin proboscis ending in what appears to be a toothed mouth or claw.
Some of the Tully monster's characteristics have been interpreted as consistent with structures found in jawless cartilaginous marine vertebrates, such as lampreys. Other scientists have argued that these characteristics cannot be conclusively interpreted as vertebrate-like. It's a debate thatTo try and resolve the issue once and for all, Mikami and his colleagues undertook an exhaustive investigation.
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