Thursday 9 March 2017

Weird Tully Monster Defies Darwinian Classifications


Reconstruction of T. gregarium. Image courtesy of Nobu Tamura, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).




Joel Kontinen

Some animals are so weird that they don’t fit into evolutionary classifications.

Of today’s creatures, the duck-billed platypus, the spiny anteater and the aardvark are huge puzzles for Darwinians.

There are more in history.

Last year researchers claimed that they had solved the mystery of the Tully monster or the Tullimonstrum gregarium. They believed it was related to lampreys.

However, recent research led by Lauren Sallan (University of Pennsylvania) suggests that this isn’t so. Science Daily quotes him as saying:

"This animal doesn't fit easy classification because it's so weird… It has these eyes that are on stalks and it has this pincer at the end of a long proboscis and there's even disagreement about which way is up. But the last thing that the Tully monster could be is a fish."

Evolutionists believe that T. gregarium lived “300 million years” ago. It probably grew to roughly 35 centimetres (14 inches). But what it was remains an enigma.
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Source:

University of Pennsylvania. 2017. 'Tully monster' mystery is far from solved, group argues. Science Daily. (20 February).