Is evolution a lie? The Tully Monster suggests evoluton took some strange turns

This can't be real, yet there are thousands of fossils.

What the heck is a Tully Monster? If there was an award for the strangest animal to ever live, the Tully Monster would be on the short list of nominees. This prehistoric, soft-bodied aquatic critter features eyes at the end of stalks projected from its body, and had a large proboscis with teeth at the end.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) -- The modern story of the Tully Monster begins in 1955, when the first specimen was discovered in the Mazon Creek formation. Amateur collector Francis Tully took his fossil to a natural history museum, but the experts could not identify it. While the creature was eventually known as a Tullly Monster, named for its odd appearance and its discoverer, even today it escapes easy classification.

The Tully Monster lived in the ocean that once submerged Illinois. The creatures were small, perhaps no more than two feet in length, and often much smaller. Their bodies were tubular, with a pair of rigid stalks sticking out on either side. At the end of the stalks were eyes, or so scientists theorize because they found pigment consistent with the fossils of eyes. 

At the front of the body is a long proboscis, with two fingers, or a clamp at the end. That clamp was lined with tiny teeth.

It is unclear if the creature is a vertebrate like a lamprey, or something else like a mollusk. Scientists cannot agree on how to classify it.

Its proboscis suggests it was a scavenger, eating whatever it could glean between rocks and in other hard to reach places. 

New studies with electron microscopes are revealing new details, but they are not ending the debates. Some scientists insist the creature was a vertebrate, and they point to its complex eyes as evidence. Eyes have evolved several times, and often in unique forms throughout prehistory. But complex eyes appear to be the exclusive property of vertebrates.

But what if Tully Monster was an invertebrate with complex eyes? What happens to the theory of evolution then? Scientists simply don't know yet.

For now, the Tully Monster remains a curiosity with thousands of specimens and few answers.

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