Dr. Victoria McCoy, Assistant Professor in the UW-Milwaukee Department of Geosciences, will present a talk about her research, entitled ‘End of an Enigma: Identifying the Strange Extinct Tully Monster as a Chordate’. Read more about the Tully Monster in Dr. McCoy’s Nature publication here.

The Tully Monster, Tullimonstrum gregarium, is an extinct animal known only from the 306-million-year-old Mazon Creek Fossil site in Illinois. For more than 50 years after its discovery in 1955, despite thousands of well-preserved fossils, the Tully Monster could not even be identified to the phylum level. This is primarily due to its two very unusual features, a long anterior proboscis ending in a bifurcate ‘claw’ and a wide, rigid horizontal eyebar. Over the years, it has been considered to be a worm, an arthropod, a mollusk or a chordate. Now, after a detailed and extensive reanalysis of its morphology, along with geochemical analyses using new techniques, we can say confidently that the enigmatic and strange-looking Tully Monster is just an unusual fish.

The presentation will begin at 4:00 PM via Microsoft Teams, preceded by an informal Q&A from 3:45 – 4:00 PM.