What We Know About the Mysterious 'Tully Monster'

Ever since its 300-million-year-old fossils were first unearthed in 1958, the alien-like "Tully Monster" has defied classification.

This bizarre creature featured a narrow, trunk-like neck that extended from its head, with a mouth at the end filled with razor-sharp teeth. Its eyes sat further back on the body at the ends of a rigid bar perched on its back, and it swam using cuttlefish-like fins at the tail section.

Needless to say, it looked more like a chimera or hoax than any sort of real creature. It was unlike anything else ever found on Earth.

2016年4月，一支由耶鲁大学领导的古生物学家团队说，他们已经确定了这只动物是什么，报告Phys.org。

根据研究人员的说法，这是脊椎动物，其最亲密的亲戚可能是七lamp虫。通过对化石进行艰苦的高科技分析，耶鲁团队能够确定塔利怪物有g和僵硬的杆或诺修克（基本上是基本的骨干），支持其身体。

“我首先对塔利怪物的奥秘感兴趣。凭借所有特殊的化石，我们对它的外观有着非常清晰的了解，但对它是什么，”维多利亚·麦科伊（Victoria McCoy）说。发表在《自然》杂志上的研究。

"Basically, nobody knew what it was," added Derek Briggs, co-author of the study. "The fossils are not easy to interpret, and they vary quite a bit. Some people thought it might be this bizarre, swimming mollusk. We decided to throw every possible analytical technique at it."

另一项研究也发表在《自然》杂志上，表明怪物的眼睛有黑色素，可以使黑色素制成和储存黑色素。根据研究人员的说法，这些结构是脊椎动物的典型特征，使该理论更具信任性。

也许它没有脊椎

但是，大约一年后，另一组研究人员说，毕竟那里没有脊椎。在他们的研究中，published in the journal Paleontology，他们说塔利怪物可能是无脊椎动物。

宾夕法尼亚大学地球与环境科学系的助理教授劳伦·萨兰（Lauren Sallan）首席研究员劳伦·萨兰（Lauren Sallan）说：“这种动物并不容易分类。”vwin徳赢德赢版本下载statement。“它有这些眼睛在茎上，并且在长长鼻的结尾处有这种钳子，甚至在哪种方式上抬起来也有分歧。但是塔利怪物可能是一条鱼。”

Sallan and her team said the studies failed to definitively classify the creature as a vertebrate.

"Having this kind of misassignment really affects our understanding of vertebrate evolution and vertebrate diversity at this given time," Sallan said. "It makes it harder to get at how things are changing in response to an ecosystem if you have this outlier. And though of course there are outliers in the fossil record — there are plenty of weird things and that's great — if you're going to make extraordinary claims, you need extraordinary evidence."

那么我们如何识别生物吗?

可能使Tully Monster识别的技术是一种称为同步子元素映射的方法，该方法通过在化石中绘制化学反应来阐明动物的物理特征。

第一项研究的作者之一麦考伊与耶鲁大学同事贾斯蒂娜·维曼（Jasmina Wiemann）合作，后者是化学分析专家。他们研究了Mazon Creek Rocks中的32个样品，这使他们回到了McCoy的原始结论，即该生物与七lamp虫最密切相关。

当然，这仍然不是确定的答案。

Thousands of Tully Monster fossils have been found, but all of them have been unearthed at a single site: coal mining pits in northeastern Illinois. So as far as researchers know, these animals could have been distinct to a specific habitat. They were named after their initial discoverer, Francis Tully, and their official scientific designation is Tullimonstrum gregarium.

塔利怪物在任何团体中都是奇怪的，曼彻斯特大学的罗伯特·桑索姆（Robert Sansom）合着了2017年的报纸，告诉新科学家2020年5月的文章。"If it's a mollusc, it's a weird mollusc. If it's a vertebrate, it's a weird vertebrate."

化石在伊利诺伊州占据了一种名人身份，在那里他们被宣布为国家化石 - 明确确定。

这些生物是如此陌生，以至于它们非常恐怖，这些牙齿肯定没有帮助，但是有史以来最大的塔利怪物只发现了大约一英尺长的措施。这意味着，如果他们今天还活着，那么人类可能不会在菜单上。但是，很难说出他们的行为。

"It's so different from its modern relatives that we don't know much about how it lived," McCoy said. "It has big eyes and lots of teeth, so it was probably a predator."