Ancient 'Tully monster' was a vertebrate, not a spineless blob, study claims
There are few ancient creatures as controversial as the Tully monster, a bowling-pin-sized oddity with eyes like a hammerhead that lived about 307 million years ago. Now, after decades of studies, each with a different take on how to define the weird aquatic creature, the Tully monster has been decoded: It's a vertebrate, meaning it had a backbone, a new study finds.
Scientists analyzed the chemical residues left on fossilized remains of the Tully monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium) and compared them with the chemical remnants on other vertebrate and invertebrate fossils from the monster's ancient home in what is now Mazon Creek in northeastern Illinois, said study lead researcher Victoria McCoy, a visiting assistant professor of geosciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
McCoy and her colleagues took a "chemical approach" rather than looking at the Tully monster's fossilized anatomy, which is "kind of like a Rorschach test," McCoy told Live Science. Ever since amateur fossil collector Francis Tully discovered the monster's remains in 1958, researchers looking at the anatomy have interpreted the beast to be all kinds of things, including a vertebrate, an invertebrate, a shell-less snail, a type of worm, a jawless fish and an arthropod, or a member of a group that includes insects, spiders and lobsters. ...
To determine whether the Tully monster was a vertebrate or invertebrate, the team decided to see if its fossils held the remnants of chitin, a long string of sugar molecules which makes up the "harder, crunchier tissues" in the exoskeletons and teeth of invertebrates, or the remnants of proteins that make up the keratin and collagen found in vertebrates, McCoy said. ...
The team looked at 32 different spots on 20 fossils, including three Tully monster specimens and 17 other ancient animals. The results revealed that Tully had a backbone, she said.
"The Tully monsters, all of its tissues that we analyzed, were made up of proteins and none of them were made up of chitin," McCoy said. "So, that is really strong evidence that the Tully monster was, in fact, a vertebrate." ...
