Giant school bus–sized octopuses may have once ruled the oceans
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(See our AI policy here .) The kraken — a giant, tentacled sea monster that dragged ships into the depths — is a creature of Norwegian myth. But millions of years ago, a similar, real-life animal roamed the oceans, a new study finds. The new analysis of jaw fossils suggests that as dinosaurs ruled the land, whale-sized octopuses ruled the seas.
These super-sized cephalopods would have been the largest marine animals of the Late Cretaceous Period. That’s from about 66 million to 100 million years ago. Researchers reported their findings April 23 in Science.
It’s difficult to study fossil octopuses, notes Yasuhiro Iba. He’s a paleontologist at Hokkaido University. With soft bodies, these animals tend to break down before becoming fossils.
Very few hard parts remain to fossilize. Fortunately, both ancient and modern-day octopuses have a hard, beak-like jaw. This structure is made of chitin (KY-tin).
This material is strong enough to survive the animal’s death and fossilize. The jaws appeared to come from an octopus-like creature. But until now, details of the body size and animal’s role in the ocean ecosystem had been a mystery, Iba says.
To find those details, Iba was part of a team that examined 15 fossil jaws. Found in Japan and Canada’s Vancouver Island, they date to near the end of the age of dinosaurs. Iba’s team took careful measurements.
They also compared the mystery jaws to those from other species of octopus and squid. The team also found 12 jaw fossils embedded in rocks in Japan. Some were too fragile to dig out.
So they examined them with a technique called digital fossil mining. It records fossils as detailed in 3-D digital images. To make these images, they ground down the rocks layer by layer.
Each layer exposed a new bit of the fossils. The researchers then took photographs of each layer. Afterward, the team used these images — with some help from artificial intelligence — to make digital models of the fossils.
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