The Mystery of the “Tully Monster”
In 1958, an amateur fossil hunter named Francis Tully unearthed something utterly bizarre in a coal mine in Illinois. The creature had eyes on stalks, a long, tube-shaped body, and a trunk ending in a claw-like mouth. Scientists had never seen anything like it. They called it the Tully Monster — and six decades later, it’s still a mystery.
The fossil dates back 300 million years, to a time when Illinois was covered by a shallow sea. Thousands of specimens have been found, yet no one can agree on what kind of animal it was. Some believe it was a vertebrate like a lamprey; others insist it was an invertebrate. Even with modern scanning technology, the debate continues.
What fascinates scientists most is how unique the Tully Monster remains. It doesn’t fit neatly into any branch of the evolutionary tree — as if nature tried something once and never again.
Today, the Tully Monster is the official state fossil of Illinois a fitting title for a creature that defies definition and continues to remind us how little we truly know about our planet’s ancient past.
