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DENVER — Did a giant kraken trolling the Triassic seas , crush ichthyosaur and arranging their bones into pleasing patterns ?
It sounds like a Halloween tale , but researchers who first intimate theexistence of this ancient sea monsterin 2011 say they now have more grounds backing up their controversial theory . Not only have they discovered a second example of strangely arranged bones , they ’ve rule a fossil that look to be the beak of an ancient squid or octopus .
This fossil discovered in Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada may be part of the beak of an ancient giant cephalopod, such as an octopus or squid.
" This was passing good luck , " said Mark McMenamin , a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts who presented his findings here Wednesday ( Oct. 30 ) at the annual group meeting of the Geological Society of America ( GSA ) . " This was recover the needle in the haystack , really . " [ See Images of New ' Kraken ' Fossils & Lair ]
Still , the kraken theory has not gained widespread sufferance .
" A kraken is n’t really necessary , " said David Fastovsky , a paleontologist at the University of Rhode Island who attended McMenamin ’s GSA presentation and penned a response to the evidence for the Paleontological Society . " Everything can be explained by much less exotic mean . "
One scientist claims these vertebrae are from ichthyosaurs taken out by a sea monster, which then arranged the bones in a pattern.
Kraken controversy
McMenamin make a splash when he and his fellow worker first float the theme of thekrakenat a GSA meeting in 2011 . The evidence : A bizarre arrangement of vertebra of the ichthyosaurShonisaurus popularisfound in Berlin - Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada .
S. populariswas a school - jalopy - size , flippered marine reptile that survive during the Triassic period , 250 million to 200 million year ago . The bones of one of these ichthyosaurs were notice in a strange linear pattern . McMenamin and his colleagues argued that they were arranged there by a jumbo cephalopod ( an octopus or squid ) play with its food .
This conjecture is n’t quite as out there as it may seem : Modern octopus are known to manipulatebones , shells and other debristo form middens , concealing the entrances to their dens . And today ’s giant calamari are bonk to battle it out with sperm whales , as tell by tentacle scars launch on whales and calamari found in hulk venter . The os arrangement could be the earliest grounds of cephalopodan intelligence agency , McMenamin said . [ turn the Kraken ! Giant Squid Photos ]
Still , the approximation engendered a lot of backlash . Glenn Storrs , the conservator of vertebrate paleontology at the Cincinnati Museum Center , summed up the scepticism to LiveScience in 2011 , call the unearthly bone organisation " circumstantial grounds . "
The kraken is back
Now , McMenamin has more . First , he argue , the arrangement of bones could not have been made by natural processes like currents or clay compaction . The soma of the os is such that there is " virtually zero " chance that currents could have nudged them into that arrangement , McMenamin told a crowded auditorium of geoscientists at this year ’s meeting .
" You always go from amore ordered to a less ordered state , not the other path around , " he said .
The unionized state of the bones is the strongest grounds that some intelligent wight arranged them , McMenamin told LiveScience . But something else came up that has him convinced : A 2nd example of the unearthly bone figure .
This one comes from an ichthyosaur fossil formerly on display at the University of Nevada , Las Vegas Museum of Natural History . The fossil had been lay out in the museum exactly as base in the area . The exhibit is long gone now , but a conservator passed a photo on to McMenamin .
" When I visit that photograph , basically my eyeballs crop up out , " McMenamin told LiveScience .
Next to the ichthyosaur was a " debris pile " of dissipate bones that were no longer in their proper place in the frame . And off to the side was a double row of vertebrae in the same constellation as McMenamin and his colleagues had seen in the original ichthyosaur remains .
The costa cage of the museum specimen shows harm , as if something — perhaps the tentacles of a giantdeep - sea monster ? — had constricted them in a bear hug .
" We think one plausible explanation of this is an attack on the icthyosaur by a much larger predatory animal , " McMenamin said .
A smoking hit man ?
Once he saw the museum exposure , McMenamin made a field despatch back to Berlin - Ichthyosaur State Park , where he and his colleagues combed through fossils weathering out of rock-and-roll in hunting of more cephalopod evidence . Almost unbelievably , they get it .
Among the fogy the team collected on their trip was a unknown , pointed object that McMenamin almost sky , thinking it might be a fish . But the fossil had un - Pisces - like fibers lean through it , so he hung on to it . month by and by , he buy amodern Humboldt squidbeak off eBay for $ 60 and equate it to the ancient fossil .
The break patterns and fiber matched . McMenamin think he has the beak of an elusive Triassic kraken .
The fossil " record that indeed there were gargantuan cephalopods in this area , " he said .
Or Not … ?
If the dodo is indeed a beak , it ’s too fragmentary to show the size of the cephalopodan it belonged to , Fastovsky evidence LiveScience . He found the rest of McMenamin ’s raw grounds similarly improbable .
The measuring McMenamin used to dismiss the notion of currents make a motion the bones was " dead inapproprriate for the interrogative sentence he is direct , " Fastovsky said . The analysis measures the probabiliy of a point in a circuit falling in a certain pie - slice of that round , he said , not the relative stableness of vertebra in current . In fact , Fastovsky pronounce , footling is known about the currents of the time , and no one has ever measured what it would take to shuffle vertebral fragments around .
Fastovsky also pushed back against the modern parallel for the hypothetical kraken ’s behavior . Octopus dunghill are n’t organized in nice course , he said . They ’re piles of debris . And sperm whales attack squid , not the other way around .
There ’s a dim-witted explaination , Fastovsky say . Ichthyosaurs go bad . They lapse to the bottom , where scavengers get to work strip their skeletons of physical body . The tendons and ligament that carry the vertebra together rot aside or are eaten .
" What bump to that vertebral column ? " Fastovsky said . " Well , the first affair that happens is it sort of begin to fall over almost like a row of dominoes . "
The weird tiled side really seems to be the most stable position for those fall dominoes to end up at rest , Fastovsky said .
" A utterly sensible , pedestrian , coherant tarradiddle emerges that does n’t require wholesale innovation of what is unknown or unprecendented , " he say .
McMenamin says he hop for more debate on his finding . So far , he say , the reaction to his talking has been plus .
" We ’re getting a message from the past tense , " he said , " So I ’m hope the discussion is expert this time . "
