Search: illinois uhaul
Why: I drove past one this morning, but I didn't have time to read the blurb. It looked like a gummy worm Loch Ness monster.
Answer: The Tully Monster!
“llinois once lay near the equator on the supercontinent of Pangea and was home to unique creatures. How did the strip mining of Illinois’ coal deposits reveal the secret of the Tully Monster?”And this website has kindly already done my work for me:
The Tully Monster, discovered in 1958 in the Mazon Creek Lagerstaaten and named Tullimonstrum gregarium in 1966, is the state fossil of Illinois. Many have been found, but so far the Tully Monster is unique to Illinois. It dates back about 300 million years. We do not know what phylum it fits into. Its shape recalls the Anomalocaris, but that disappeared 100 million years earlier. Of course, with fossilization of soft-bodied organisms being so rare, perhaps it is a descendant of Anomalocaris!
Source: Science Notes
The More You Know: The anomalocaris ("abnormal shrimp") was a unsettlingly gigantic sea-dwelling predator that I'm really glad isn't around anymore, although I bet it would have been delicious.
