Legendary kraken may have existed

The legendary kraken, a colossal octopus that allegedly caused whales and ships to flee the coasts of Norway and Iceland, may in fact be real. The kraken is believed to have been almost 100 feet long, or twice the size of the colossal squid, and its fossil shows vertebrae that resemble the suckers of a cephalopod tentacle.

According to researcher Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College, the kraken probably drowned or snapped the necks of ichthyosaurs, one of the ocean's top predators. It then dragged the corpses to its lair, the equivalent of a modern octopus's midden. McMenamin says that octopodes pile the corpses of their prey in a midden and are known to play with the pieces.

Glenn Storrs, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Cincinnati Museum Center, says that the existence of the kraken is quite radical as there is no direct evidence of known large cephalopods. He adds that alternate explanations may be necessary as the specimens are poorly preserved in their current setting.

McMenamin, who presented his work on October 10 at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis, suggests that the lack of evidence is due to the soft-bodied nature of the animal. Clearly, more direct evidence is needed in order to firmly prove the kraken's existence.

Evidence for the kraken's existence can be found on the bones of Shonisaurus popularis, nine-foot ichthyosaurs that lived during the Triassic period some 248 to 206 million years ago. The modern equivalent of these beasts is the giant squid-eating sperm whale.

McMenamin was interested in deducing the cause of death of the S. popularis individuals at the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada. Charles Lewis Camp of U.C. Berkeley, an expert on the site, suggested in the 1950s that the specimens were killed by an accidental stranding or toxic plankton bloom. However, recent work by Jennifer Hogler, then at the University of California Museum of Paleontology, suggested that they died in a deepwater environment.

McMenamin and his daughter concluded that the etchings and purposeful configuration on the bones of the ichthyosaurs indicated that the ichthyosaurs had been killed and dragged back to the kraken's lair afterwards. Similar behaviors have been observed in the modern octopus.

The state of the S. popularis bones suggested that an octopus-like creature either drowned the air-breathing ichthyosaurs or broke their necks. The specimens had an abnormal number of broken ribs, and evidence of twisted necks was also present. Additionally, the sucker-like patterns on the fossils resembled a cephalopod's tentacles, suggesting that the kraken belonged to a member of Coleoidea, a subclass that includes octopodes, squid, and cuttlefish.

McMenamin also wanted to know whether an octopus-like creature could have possibly killed the large predatory reptiles. Staff at the Seattle Aquarium have filmed a large Pacific Octopus killing sharks in one of their large tanks. The only difference between the Pacific Octopus and kraken, according to McMenamin, is the enormous size of the latter.

Since octopodes are mostly soft-bodied, they do not fossilize well and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find remains from so long ago. While octopus beaks are hard, the chances of them being preserved are also very low, according to the researchers.

Due to the circumstantial evidence supporting this finding, McMenamin expects some people to be skeptical. Brian Switek, a research associate at the New Jersey State Museum, says that McMenamin's case is based on peculiar inferences about the site. He says that the bones were unlikely to have been intentionally arranged and could have been distributed by natural processes of decay and preservation.

McMenamin, on the other hand, believes that he presents a good case.