The story
Named after amateur collector Francis Tully, who found the first of these fossils in 1955.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Tully monster
Today it means: A soft-bodied bilaterian animal, notable for its dubious taxonomic status, †Tullimonstrum gregarium, which lived in shallow tropical coastal waters of muddy estuaries during the Pennsylvanian geological period, about 300 million years ago. This animal has an odd appearance, having a mostly cigar-shaped body, with a triangular tail fin, two long stalked eyes, and a proboscis tipped with a mouth-like appendage. Full definition →