Evolution Story

One day 300 million years, Illinois was once covered in swamps and there was a

creature named the ​Tully ​Monster 1 that lived there. North America during that time, was under

the ​equator 2​ ​which means that the climate was different from what it is today. The climate was

so different when the Tully Monster lived there due to the continents not being shifted together

but as time passed, ​pangea 3​ occurred in the ​carboniferous ​period 4​. ​As time passed, the

continents moved away from each other, causing the climate to change and the ​extinction 5​ ​of

the Tully Monster to occur. ​Paleontologists 6 ​have found ​fossils 7 of the Tully Monster that also

formed into ​sedimentary ​rocks 8​. This occured when ​weathering 9​ ​happened. Today, the

morphology​ 10​ ​of the Tully Monster had changed.

A amateur collector named Francis Tully was the first person to find these fossils of the

Tully Monster in 1955 in a fossil bed known as the Mazon Creek. He took this strange creature

to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, but paleontologists were stumped to what

group this creature belonged to. Over 90 years ago, researchers had no clue that the Tully

Monster existed and were also confused to why the Tully Monster only lived in Illinois.

As time passed, nobody really knew anything about the Tully Monster. It was later then
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determined that the Tully Monster had a ​proboscis and was a weird looking animal that

looked half like a regular fish but the end looked like a shark. The cause of the extinction of the

Tully Monster is still unknown but scientists think that the change of the climate had something
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to do with it. The ​plates ​had moved due to possible ​volcanoes or ​earthquakes

happening. The earth’s crust is made up of several parts called plates (oceanic and continental)
and that is where the earthquakes start forming. Beneath the earth, is were the ​semi-molten 15

rocks are found.

1. Tully Monster-​ Extinct animal that lived 300 million years ago

2. Equator- ​Horizontal line that separates the world into 2 sections

3. Pangea- ​Supercontinent that all continents were together

4. Carboniferous Period- ​Producing or containing carbon or coal

5. Extinct- ​Having no living members of a species

6. Paleontologist- ​Person who studies fossils

7. Fossil- ​The remains or impression of a prehistoric organism preserved in petrified

form or as a mold or cast in rock.

8. Sedimentary Rocks- ​Sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the

deposition of that material at the Earth's surface and within bodies of water.

9. Weathering- ​Change of texture due to long exposure of air

10. Morphology- ​The study of the forms of things; structure

11. Proboscis- ​Nose of a mammal that’s long

12. Plates- ​Movement of the Earth's surface in the present and the past

13. Volcano- ​A mountain having a crater which lava erupts from it

14. Earthquake- ​Shaking of the ground that causes destruction

15. Semi-molten Rocks- ​Rocks that are found beneath the surface of the Earth