The constant debate about the 300 million-year-old Tully monster

All previous research on the Tully monster has been denied. It is not known what species it is.

Nobody really knows what a Tully monster is. It may be a species of squid, or it resembles a rocky lizard fish. It has an odd frame, growing on a tentacle or claws. It is also unknown whether or not it is the mouth.

The classification of 300 million-year-old fossil remains has never been easy. In 2016, researchers carefully analyzed the eye structure of the monster Tully concluded that its pigments were more similar to fish than snails or squid.

This is considered a portrait of the monster Tully.

Recently, researchers from Cork University of Ireland and Fujita Medical University (Japan) analyzed the pigments in the eyes of modern cephalopods and some fish species to redefine them. As a result, anything science has ever concluded about the Tully monster is incorrect.

The controversial rock was dug up by an amateur fossil hunter named Francis Tully in 1955. That fossil is really strange. It has no clear bones, hard stalks protruding from either side as well as a twisted muzzle resting on a claw.

For half a century, paleontologists have wondered where the Tully monster is placed in the tree of life.

In 2016, researchers from Yale University declared that the gut-like structure in the Tully fossils was indeed a notochord . Later when they studied their eyes, they determined that there were small melanin pigments called melanosomes.

Squid invertebrates are thought to rely on other substances, such as ommochrom or pterin, for pigment screening. Therefore, they claim that the Tully monster is more like a fish than a squid.

However, when researchers looked closely at the recent Tully monster fossils, they found that its melanosome contained less zinc than the eyes of fossils of vertebrates from the same region.

They also found a significant amount of copper ions, suggesting this creature has more in common than cuttlefish than the rockfish.

Maybe, we have to wait a bit longer for scientists to continue researching, to find out its true origin.

1. Discovered the origin of the monster Tully 300 million years ago