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* Our state fossil turns out to be a bloodsucker…
Remember the Tully monster? It hasn’t been much in the news lately, but many of you may know it is the official fossil of the state of Illinois.
It achieved that exalted status by virtue of it’s fossilized remains being found by FRANCIS TULLY in 1958 in deposits near the Mazon Creek in northern Illinois. But even though the thing was first found nearly 60 years ago, it turns out that scientists have never really been sure what the monster was exactly. According to a story in the New York Times last week, some scientists thought the thing was a mollusk, like a snail. Others thought it was more like an arthropod such as an insect or a crab. Still others thought it was a worm. That’s a fairly divergent list of possibilities for the critter.
Now, according to the Times story, Yale researchers have come to a new conclusion. The Tully monster is a vertebrate “most closely related to the lamprey, an underwater bloodsucker.”
Did state lawmakers know what they were doing in making the Tully monster an official Illinois state symbol or what?
Well, we are known as the Sucker State, so I guess it fits.
posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Mar 21, 16 @ 9:30 am
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I’m heading to the Illinois State Museum at lunch to learn mor…oh yeah, no I can’t.
Comment by 360 Degree TurnAround Monday, Mar 21, 16 @ 9:37 am
The Tully Monster might’ve been a bloodsucker, but it was OUR bloodsucker.
Comment by Northsider Monday, Mar 21, 16 @ 9:46 am
The principal of my junior high was the daughter I believe of Francis Tully, and she was affectionately referred to by those who made frequent trips to her office the “Tully Monster”
Comment by Anonymous Monday, Mar 21, 16 @ 10:18 am
So apparently Illinois politics predates even primordial life. Madigan must have had something to do with it.
Comment by My New Handle Monday, Mar 21, 16 @ 10:31 am
Madigan and the monsters he controls. Twas always thus, apparently.
Comment by MSIX Monday, Mar 21, 16 @ 10:38 am
“The adult lamprey may be characterized by a toothed, funnel-like sucking mouth. Wikipedia”
Perfect.
Comment by a drop in Monday, Mar 21, 16 @ 11:17 am
Actually…it probably wasn’t a blood sucker. More like a muckraking bottom-feeder. So, you know, still appropriate.
The key discovery in nailing down this bizarre creature was evidence it had a notochord, a sort of primitive spine. This places it squarely in the Vertebrate Phylum (literally one step more refined than Kingdom…before this all we could really say about it was “yup, that’s an animal all right”). Knowing it’s a vertebrate helps make sense of some other odd features, which in turn helps place it as an early agnathan, or jawless fish, like lampreys and hagfish.
But not all agnathans are or were bloodsuckers like the lamprey. Hagfish are scavengers, and infamous slime-makers. Tullimonstrum is still incredibly weird; it appears that it fed by poking the long, skinny appendage sticking out its front end into the mud, grabbing small prey with the toothed pincer at the end. Even that’s a fair bit of guesswork, because this critter really is a basket case.
Comment by Threepwood Monday, Mar 21, 16 @ 12:05 pm
If it had a spine it cannot be an ancestor of our politicians. That would be reverse evolution.
Comment by a drop in Monday, Mar 21, 16 @ 1:06 pm
If I recall Helen Satterthwaite sponsor the Tully
Monster bill
Comment by fdrdemocrat Monday, Mar 21, 16 @ 4:13 pm