Spooky Specimens: The Tully Monster

Hello hello! And welcome to my first long-form video :)

This is about the Tully monster (Tullimonstrum), a perplexing animal alive during the Carboniferous Period. Scientists have been arguing about its classification for...way too long now. Let me know what you think it is in the comments!

I want to give special thank you's to:
- and Gian, for helping me bring these videos to life :)

I'm still figuring out exactly what my long-form content style will be. And trying some new things as I learn how to make them the quality uploads that I'm envisioning. So I hope you're looking forward to the ride lol

Keep up with the daily Spooky Specimens series (and other content) on:
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And allll of my links here:

[MorganJagermeister]

They used to call me the Tully monster back in my college days. I never understood why but now I’m guessing it was always because of my long cup eyestalks and lack of a spine. Neat.

[herpderp]

0:31 I so want a tshirt that just has the Tully Monster and the caption "WHAT" in huge font above it.

[Peannlui]

Thank you for the definition between The Monster versus the Doctor Tully that created him. Though literature geeks will insist Dr. Tully was the real monster.

[doglover]

This is one of those weird fun moments where being from a small town in Illinois is actually kinda cool. My local library had fossils of the Tully monster because it was found in our area! Thanks for the great video on this nifty lil guy.

[xJadeWolfxx]

I love the cat silhouette on the whiteboard lmao. This was such an interesting fossil. I'm super excited about long form spooky specimens!

[zachw]

This is a really cool video. NGL, when you said "doubled down with lasers", I immediately pictured the first team bursting into the second team's lab and shouting "oh really!?" before using powerful lasers to turn the second team to charcoal. This is why my brain needs adult supervision

[nicolasbekkouche]

So, my "weird" hypothesis, is that it may have been a longstanding branch of opabiniids :) This would fit with : the proboscis, the stalked eyes as well, and they are common in Dinocarida and Panarthropoda, the fin like structures may be fused flaps (assuming the animals are twisted and they are actually lateral), and the repeated structures interpreted as gill slits would be remnants of the external segmentation. In this regard the animal would have lose most of the external segmentation traits (like spiders). Also we know that Radiodonts didn't disappear during the Cambrian, we have Schinderhannes for example, so it is possible that some of them survived longer than we thought. Anyway this is just a fun hypothesis to mess with, and I hope we will resolve it one day, but I am quite skeptical about the vertebrate hypothesis, we tend to know vertebrates so well that is is easy to force anything in it... And it is easier to have a high impact factor paper about vertebrates than about a strange "invertebrate" ;)

[RichardSayre]

I love the chaotic feel of your videos. You manage to make what is essentially a lecture fun with the language and the asides.

[ospmediagroup]

This is straight out of spore and I love it. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

[oldsarj]

It's obvious why Casual Geographic calls you in for assistance. You're wonderful. If I had grandchildren, I would want them to turn out like you. Hilarious!

[Kamiweb]

Is there a chance this is an in-between type of creature? Maybe it hadn't decided if it wanted to be a squid or a fish yet 😂

[bluevanga]

Been going on a Lindsay binge. So glad she started YouTube

[Sauti_science]

Based on my month and a half worth of Vertebrate Structure And Function class, I am leaning towards vertebrate, mainly based on the notochord, with a secondary loss of the actual bones, as well as complex eyes. My best guess would be something taxonomically weird like a hagfish.

[herbertkeithmiller]

3:05 regarding spectroscopy and determining what stuff is made of, suffice it to say that when you take a subject and shine certain wavelengths of light or bombard it with subatomic particles It will bounce back or emit frequencies of light that can help you determine what it is made of.

[Jasper]

I showed you to my 14 year old daughter. She often rolls her eyes ans humors me but you genuinely piqued her interest. She loves science and when she was 4 she constantly watched Brain Scoop and loved the girl hosting that. Her love of science has grown and now she's focusing on botany and wants to study food deserts and the socio-economic impacts in botany and how class and government affects how food is distributed. She's Hella smart and I'm very proud watching her grow into thid science minded young woman. At 14 she has sights set on Yale. I for one support this as am happy to see you blazing through just sharing your knowledge and you come off so natural and real. You do well. Thank you

[SocratesOnABike]

I also like that this video is a bit more chill than your short-form content. Nice to hear you having more time to explain things.

[Drewcatmorris]

I think that the Tully Monster is an excellent beastie for a Call of Cthulhu game.

More seriously though, could this be an example of evolution from when the vertebrate and invertebrate species branched? Perhaps something that was proto-vertebrate?

[isaaccrawford]

Absolutely LOVE this video and your energy please never stop telling us about weird shit

[Epheleb]

That was very cool I'm so glad you're making YouTube content!
Keep up the great work I found out about you thanks to Milo can't wait for the future work you have in store!

[fireblazenotbulgaria]

The Tully Monster is just some crazy build someone made on Spore