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avancna — Tullimonstrum gregarium
Published: 2007-04-17 04:44:03 +0000 UTC; Views: 3098; Favourites: 24; Downloads: 46
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Description
A pair of the Illinois enigma, Tullimonstrum gregarium, swimming through seaweed. The larger one prepares to ambush a pair of aitches, Etacystis communis fluttering by, while a pair of polyp-like wyes, Escumasia roryi, drift in the current.Related content
Comments: 25
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tul…
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Is this related to Opabinia in any way (stalked eyes, trunk not associated with mouth, segmentation)?
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as do i. i am not going to sit and waste my time on those squares... 1-9.... *shudder*
so i just finished reading the book of Job for the umpteenth time (what can i say, i love Job's story!),
and i was wondering what your view or understanding of the behemoth and more importantly, the leviathan were. of course there are all sorts of ideas on what they were/are, looked like, and so on, like i have read that the behemoth is comparable to the Hippo??? i have only seen the behemoth referenced in Job, and the leviathan refrenced frequently in the old testament, especially in the Psalms.
let me know your thoughts.
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My opinion is that Behemoth is a great and fancy embellished description of the Hippopotamus, which can be an extremely terrifying animal without the need of embellishment. Leviathan, as described in Job, could either be a crocodile, a whale, a combination of a whale and a crocodile, or, according to one scholar, somewhere, a personification of the ocean. Leviathan as mentioned in Psalms suggests the various "primordial chaos dragons" of the various Middle East cultures, like Lotan of the Hittites, or Tiamat. Certainly, it does not refer to any natural animal, as no animal naturally has seven heads (there are those with two, but, they can only survive to adulthood with human assistance, if they even survive to birth)
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i definately had to do a project on the Tully monsters in 4th grade as part of a class-wide illinois citizan project. each group had one of the illinois symbols, like flower (violet), bird (cardninal), tree (white oak)
we got the fossil. hey now!
illinois represent!
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I once read a report that suggested the Tully Monster was a pteropod (a kind of swimming sea snail). But, looking back, that wasn't a very good guess, given as how the typical pteropod is not built anything like the Tully Monster.
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Was that Dr. Merrill Foster's "A Reappraisal of T. gregarium"?
If so, his thesis was actually that Tullimonstrum was not, in fact, a pteropod or pelagic heteropod, but a representative of an earlier and now extinct radiation of the gastropoda into a pelagic mode of life, with certain features convergent upon those of extant free-swimming snails. In his opinion, the "claw" at the end of the proboscis is actually no such thing, but a cross-section of a more or less ordinary buccal mass...
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I think it was, thanks for correcting me.
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I got no dog in that fight; nor am I trying to 1-up you or anyone. But I talk to Dr. Foster now and again and evidently people misunderstand his thesis from that paper a lot, and it pisses him off because people are all "HA HA FOSTER THINKS IT'S A PTEROPOD" so i feel obligated to clarify.
carry on
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Well, I didn't intend to misunderstand him, as, it's been 4, maybe 5 years since I read his report, and I do sincerely appreciate your clarification.
The only reason why I didn't find Dr Foster's hypothesis of T. gregarium being a derived gastropod completely convincing is that we don't see a trace of the sole. And in all mollusk groups other than the solenogasters, we either see a sole, or something derived from the sole, be it the bivalve's foot or the cephalopod tentacles.
Certainly, I admire anyone brave enough to take a stab at identifying T. gregarium's taxonomy.
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I personally agree with the idea of it being a gastropod. I mean, look at Pterotrachea:
www.thefossilforum.com/uploads…
The Bogleech site has pictures of it. Swimming, proboscis-bearing sole-less horror. The only other idea I could envisage is some sort of soft-bodied arthropod, maybe even a sea-cucumber.
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It would probably be a pterobranch-like mollusc, as no arthropod lacks legs as an adult, and a sea cucumber with eyes?
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Oh, you're right of course. I suppose mollusc is the best bet, unless it's some ghastly Cambrian ghost lineage...
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true, that there is little resemblance to a snail. lol
we had to color the tully monster grey. we tried to make it colorful, but our teacher shot us down. so while all the other kids were making purple violets and bright red birds and brown and white deer and such, we had a grey tully monster. i like your green very much.
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Well, sea butterflies don't necessarily have a big resemblance to snails, either... [link]
And in my case, well, Mazon Creek in the Carboniferous was a big weedy estuary, so being green would have helped it blend in with the environment.
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OH wow you and i do not have the same sort of knowledge on the subject. i basically know what the Tully monster was and that it is the state fossil. but thanks, i learned something new today!
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They say if you learn something new every day, you can postpone senility slightly...
And the state fossil of California is the California Sabertooth, Smilodon fatalis, and the state fossil of Ohio is the trilobite Isotelus maximus, and the state fossil of Maryland is the murex snail, Ecphora quadricostata quadricostata.
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hahahaha well thanks. i knew that bit about delaying senility. some company or other has developed hand held games that use a stylus for adults, that are mind games and word puzzles and so forth.
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I draw the line at sudoku.
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The Tullimonstrum look like rocking critters. And great job with the transparent guys.
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