Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

This Is a Real Creature, and the Field Museum Helped Figure Out What It Is

 Field Museum scientists help discover Tully monsters, or prehistoric aquatic animals with tube-shaped bodies and skinny snouts ending in a toothed jaw or claw. The creatures lived in Illinois and elsewhere hundreds of millions of years ago.
Field Museum scientists help discover Tully monsters, or prehistoric aquatic animals with tube-shaped bodies and skinny snouts ending in a toothed jaw or claw. The creatures lived in Illinois and elsewhere hundreds of millions of years ago.
View Full Caption
Sean McMahon

MUSEUM CAMPUS — Field Museum scientists say they've solved the mystery of Tully Monsters: the odd-looking tube creatures that surfed Illinois hundreds of millions of years ago. 

For decades scientists couldn't figure out how to classify the "monsters," whose fossils were discovered in the 1950s. But in an article published Wednesday in Nature, the Field Museum, along with Yale, Argonne National Laboratory, and the American Museum of Natural History, determined that Tully Monsters are vertebrates, or jawless fish.

“It’s a beautiful example of how science works to solve mysteries of nature, and how museums fit in,” said Scott Lidgard, the Field's curator of invertebrate paleontology. 

Reporter David Matthews discusses the Tully Monsters.

The scientists relied on the Field's 2,000 Tully Monster specimens. Predating T.Rex's and many other dinosaurs, Tully Monsters lived 307 million years ago and were only found in the Mazon Creek region 50 miles southwest of Chicago. 

The monsters are aquatic animals with tube-shaped bodies up to a foot long, skinny snouts ending in a toothed jaw or claw, and eyes at the end of short stalks, the Field said. 

"The Tully monster is a wonderful fossil that captures the imagination of every school kid,” said Paul Mayer, the Field's fossil invertebrates collections manager. “When I talk to school groups, I used to use the Tully monster as an example of a mystery that paleontologists have been trying to solve ever since it was discovered. Now, I’ll have to change my talk."

For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here: