The Enigmatic Fossil – The Tully Monster
- 演化之聲
- Mar 14
- 6 min read
In 1955, an American amateur fossil collector, Francis Tully, obtained a peculiar fossil from the Mazon Creek fossil beds in Illinois. Intrigued by its unusual form, he brought the specimen to the Field Museum of Natural History for identification. The paleontologists there were immediately puzzled. The fossil preserved an organism with a cigar-shaped body, a triangular tail fin, and a pair of eyes mounted on a long horizontal stalk. Most bizarre of all was a slender, flexible proboscis extending from the head, ending in a pincer-like mouth. No one could confidently determine what kind of animal it represented. Over the following years, numerous interpretations appeared. Some researchers suggested it might be a mollusc, others proposed an arthropod, and still others compared it with conodonts, worms, tunicates, vertebrates, or even members of an entirely extinct animal phylum. Because of this persistent uncertainty, the organism came to be known informally as the “Tully Monster.”
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