So why did the
fabulous Kraken go extinct? The short
answer is that it has not gone extinct.
After all human reports, rare as they are, go way back among sailors
during the days when boats were small and slow enough to be mistaken for a
whale. Now we have the necessary fossil
evidence of their nests or equivalent with the appropriate debris midden.
The difference
today is that the kraken’s hunting protocol no longer overlaps human seagoing
at all.
A Kraken on the
hunt rises from the deep in pursuit of obvious prey such as a pod of
whales. This is a slow process by itself
and must bring the creature stealthily into attack range of only a few meters
below the surface itself or at least within a jet propelled sprint. This movement is likely triggered by observation
of a nearby population moving into range by the sounds they make.
An ambush attack
provides a victim quickly subdued and drawn down to the deep to provide a food
supply that would last a long time.
What we need to
do now is to find a more recent such nest were the midden is not yet
fossilized.
Did the Kraken
exist after all? Fossils revive idea of ancient sea monster that turned its
prey's bones into works of ART
Kraken
is a legendary tentacled monster that ate whales and even ships
Markings
found in 2011 gave rise to claims the Kraken may have existed
Researchers
have now found a fossil said to belong to an ancient squid
They
also found bones from the animal's prey arranged in strange patterns
Discoveries
have revived claims about the mythical creature's existence
UPDATED: 16:33 GMT, 1 November 2013
As the story goes, the mythical Kraken was an ancient tentacled sea monster that ate whales and devoured entire ships.
In 2011 researchers found the remains of a marine
lizard that had been arranged in a strange pattern by what they claimed was a
giant Kraken-style octopus playing with its food.
These claims were widely criticised, but now new
fossils discovered by the same researchers add further weight to the theory
that the Kraken not only existed, but that he used his prey's bones as
art.
This fossil, found in Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park
in Nevada by Professor McMenamin is believed to be part of the beak of a
giant ancient octopus- or squid-type creature. This has revived claims made
by McMenamin that a mythical tentacled sea monster called the Kraken may have
actually existed
Both claims have been made by Professor Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in
Massachusetts.
Professor McMenamin initially found the strange
arrangement of vertebrae of the ichthyosaur Shonisaurus popularis in Berlin-Ichthyosaur
State Park in Nevada.
The shonisaurus was a sea reptile that lived
around 200 million to 250 million years ago.
His latest discoveries include the beak of what is
believed to be an ancient cephalopod, as well as more bones arranged in unusual
patterns and shapes.
Discovery: Researcher Mark Professor McMenamin says
this arrangement of lizard bones, which were brought to this area in a pattern
of a tentacle, could prove the existence of the Kraken
The new discovery of fossils, including this
shell-like fossil believed to belong to an ancient octopus-type creature, made
Professor's McMenamin's 'eyes pop out of his head' because they supported his
2011 theory about the existence of the Kraken
This new arrangement
of ichthyosaur fossils, which Professor McMenamin saw from a photo
taken at the University of Nevada's Museum of Natural History, show the bones
laid out in the museum exactly how they had been found in the park.
Next to the remains of the ichthyosaur was a
'debris pile' of scattered bones that were no longer in their correct order
within the skeleton.
McMenamin told LiveScience: 'When I saw
that photograph, basically my eyeballs popped out.'
'We think one plausible explanation of this is an
attack on the icthyosaur by a much larger predator.'
Professor McMenamin argues that the way the bones
were arranged could not have occurred naturally.
He reiterated his point at a meeting of
geoscientists recently by saying there was 'virtually zero' chance the sea's
currents could have moved them into such an arrangement.
As the story goes, the mythical Kraken, illustrated
here, was an ancient tentacled sea monster, which ate whales and devoured
entire ships. Stories about this monster seem to date back to 12th century
Norway. These tales often refer to a creature so big it was mistaken for an
island
Professor McMenamin said that evidence of the
Kraken, which would have been up to 30 metres long, comes from the vicious
injures it inflicted on the giant marine reptile ichthyosaur, either by
drowning the creature or snapping its neck.
The researcher claims he can tell this by examining
the placement and sucker markings on bones, which seems to prove the creatures
were drowned or had their necks snapped by a Kraken-like creature.
But Professor Professor McMenamin said: 'I was aware
that anytime there is controversy about depth, there is probably something
interesting going on.'
A Kraken destroys the Edinburgh Trader in the 2006
Disney film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, still from the film is
pictured
'It became very clear that something very odd was
going on there," he said. 'It was a very odd configuration of bones.
Professor McMenamin also noticed, because of the
arrangement, that they had been carried away from where they were killed,
leading him to think they had been carried to the Kraken's lair and dumped in
the pattern of the mysterious creature's tentacles in a 'midden' - a pile of
remains accumulated by the beast.
'Modern octopus will do this,' Professor McMenamin said. 'What if there was an
ancient, very large sort of octopus, like the Kraken of mythology?'
'I think that these things were captured by the
Kraken and taken to the midden and the cephalopod would take them apart.'
Professor McMenamin explained the absence of any
Kraken fossils with the fact that octopuses are soft-bodied creatures, but
sceptics say his explanation is simply circumstantial evidence.
Today's cephalopods - even the largest - are rarely
much bigger than a human being. The largest existing specimens of this Pacific
giant octopus species tend to weigh around 150lb
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