It’s official, this must be cryptozoology week! A couple days ago we “reported” that the Kemerovo Russians had some “irrefutable evidence” that Yetis exist, and now scientists (using actual facts and proof this time!) have made a discovery which supports the theory that none other than the legendary Kraken may have ruled the prehistoric seas.
Up until now, we believed that the mighty ichthyosaurs – Shonisaurus popularis, school bus-sized reptilian predators – ruled Earth’s ancient oceans, but a new theory may prove that there was a different king of the Triassic waters.
I'll give you a hint. It looks like this and rhymes with Braken...
In a presentation made at a meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis on October 10th, Mark McMenamin – a study researcher and paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in Mass. – presented evidence for the Kraken and its violent behavior – a theory derived from some markings found on the bones and remains of nine 45 foot (14 meter) ichthyosaurs from the Triassic period (248 million to 206 million years ago).
How these mighty creatures died has long been a mystery. In 1950s Charles Lewis Camp hypothesized that they had fallen victim to a toxic plankton bloom or accidentally getting stranded in shallow water, but recent work on the rocks surrounding the fossils seem to suggest that the beasts died in deep water, debunking Camp’s theories.
Obsessed with solving the puzzle of how these creatures were killed, McMenamin accepted the challenge. “I was aware that anytime there is controversy about depth, there is probably something interesting going on.” That’s when he saw the markings.
By arranging the vertebrae of some ichthyosaur remains, some odd patterns - not unlike the suckers on a giant cephalopod’s tentacle - revealed themselves.
According to McMenamin, this “Kraken” would have been nearly 100 feet (roughly 2.5 city blocks) long – that’s twice the size of the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis – and most likely snapped the necks of the ichthyosaurs and dragged their massive, limp corpses back to its underwater lair.
Comparing this believed behavior to that of the modern octopus, McMenamin said, “It is known that the modern octopus will pile the remains of its prey in a midden and play with and manipulate those pieces.” So the Kraken may have been a horrifyingly large octopus/dinosaur that kills the ocean’s most vicious predators and, in a fit of childhood nostalgia, takes their lifeless corpses back home to play with like Barbies and G.I. Joes? Awesome.
The ocean is my bathtub and this GIANT BOAT is my rubber ducky...
Not everyone is jumping on the Kraken bandwagon, though.
Glenn Storrs (curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Cincinnati Museum Center) refuted McMenamin’s theories with, “No direct evidence of large cephalopods, in fact very little data at all, is problematic for proposing such a radical explanation.” He went on to say, “The specimens are not well preserved in their current setting, thus the arrangement, ‘etching’ and bone breakage may have alternate explanations. To my mind, this hypothesis is like looking at clouds, being able to see what you desire.”
Another skeptic, Brian Switek (a research associate at the New Jersey State Museum), wrote, “The McMenamins’ entire case is based on peculiar inferences about the site. It is a case of reading the scattered bones as if they were tea leaves able to tell someone’s fortune. Rather than being distributed through the bonebed by natural processes related to decay and preservation, the McMenamins argue that the Shonisaurus bones were intentionally arrayed in a ‘midden’ by a huge cephalopod nearly 100 feet long.”
What do you think? Did the mighty Kraken lurk beneath the depths of the ancient seas, or is McMenamin just looking at the facts and seeing what he wants to see?
Recent Comments