Potentially Unbelievable Discovery: Did a sea monster make an artwork… out of bones?

Lair of Ancient 'Kraken' Sea Monster Discovered - LiveScience.com


[SIZE=-2]earthtimes.org[/SIZE]


Lair of Ancient 'Kraken' Sea Monster Discovered
[SIZE=-1]LiveScience.com[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The kraken, which would've been nearly 100 feet (30 meters) long, or twice the size of the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis, likely drowned or broke the necks of the ichthyosaurs before dragging the corpses to its lair, akin to an octopus's midden, ...[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Did a sea monster make an artwork… out of bones?[SIZE=-1]World Science[/SIZE][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Triassic 'Kraken' may have created self-portrait[SIZE=-1]TG Daily[/SIZE][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Giant kraken lair discovered[SIZE=-1]Science Codex[/SIZE][/SIZE]
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Well the "self-portrait" aspect does seem a bit over-the-top fanciful, but I can understand a scenario where a ceph would arrange bones of an ichthyosaur (not necessarily one s/he killed) outside its den, as octopuses typically do. Looking forward to the report...
 
Here's an explanation I think is somewhat more plausible - both octopus suckers and these particular ichthyosaur bones conform to optimal space-utilisation of alternating offset rows. The resemblance between them is due this alone.

Vertebral disks land flat-side down under agitation, particularly if they have spiny processes. So the flat-side up thing is no real mystery, as long something occurred to jiggle the bones about (currents or tides, for example). Now, as for the alternating arrangement, that is the tightest stacking possible for round things. So all one would need to reproduce this pattern is agitation (not unfeasible in the ocean...) and some edge structure against which the bones could be packed (again, given it's a sea-floor, hardly improbable).

I'd love it to be the Kracken too, but sadly I think some better evidence than this is needed for its existence.
 
I really hope that poor guy doesn't get up in front of a lot of intelligent people and say that those vertebrae are self portraits. Although, maybe he does have an argument, it was a lazy cephalopod who hated changing to look like its environment, so it changed its environment to look like it. Maybe if paleontology doesn't pan out for him he could write a children's book about the importance of not changing yourself to look like others. Kidding aside, I think he is really probably more interested in the idea of a "Kraken" being what killed all these. The self portrait bit is probably just an obsessive aside.

At least that's what I thought before reading http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/facultyprofiles/ma_mcmenamin.html

Anyway, I'M more interested in the idea of a giant octopus like creature having killed them. Would they? Drowning a shark and a reptilian are two different things. Would they do it to eat them? to eliminate a competitor? kill or be killed? What evidence is there of modern cephs performing similar behavior in the wild?
 
I agree with Robyn.

Plus, I'm yet to see any octopus arrange middens. I've frequently seen octopuses carry middens away from the den entrance and dump it, but never in the same place twice, and never placing with the arms as would be needed here (they carry it under the web and dump it). Sure, sometimes they gather whatever chunky thing they can find (can inadvertently include middens but usually is pebbles, etc) and bring it to the den entrance, sometimes they may be choosy about pebble size (though as far as I know this hasn't been tested), and sometimes it takes a while to make sure the pile protecting the entrance doesn't fall over, but at least for what I've seen in the wild den maintenance is limited to pushing/pulling a few things around until they form a little pile. Among the animal kingdom this type of behavior is not particularly special.
 
Lair of Ancient 'Kraken' Sea Monster Possibly Discovered - Fox News


[SIZE=-2]Science a Gogo[/SIZE]


Lair of Ancient 'Kraken' Sea Monster Possibly Discovered
[SIZE=-1]Fox News[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The kraken, which would've been nearly 100 feet (30 meters) long, or twice the size of the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis, likely drowned or broke the necks of the ichthyosaurs before dragging the corpses to its lair, akin to an octopus's midden, ...[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Mega-octopus may topple ichthyosaur from top of Triassic food chain[SIZE=-1]Science a Gogo[/SIZE][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Intelligent Kraken Sea Monster Purposefully Arranged Ichthyosaurs Bones in Its ...[SIZE=-1]International Business Times[/SIZE][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Did a sea monster make an artwork… out of bones?[SIZE=-1]World Science[/SIZE][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The Epoch Times -Huffington Post[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]all 34 news articles[/SIZE]


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The Giant, Prehistoric Squid That Ate Common Sense - Wired News



The Giant, Prehistoric Squid That Ate Common Sense
[SIZE=-1]Wired News[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]A big one, in fact, and today that problem takes the form of a giant, prehistoric squid with tentacles so formidable that it has sucked the brains right out of staff writers' heads. While making the rounds among a few California museums late last month ...[/SIZE]
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[SIZE=-1]http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&ned=us&ncl=dzuWU1SUKy1C06M[/SIZE]


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