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- "Check it, bitches! I killed this muthafucka and made a sculpture out of his bones. You wanna piece of this?"
UPDATE 2: Sent by Slog-tipper Michael, an article in Wired on this story and the failures of science journalism. Read it!
UPDATE 1: Apparently no ancient krakens made self-portraits with shonisaur bones, and the guy who came up with this theory is a nutter. According to this article:
This "Triassic kraken" has not been found; no fossils, no remains at all, no evidence of its existence. It is postulated to have been large enough to hunt and kill ichthyosaurs, which is remarkable—comparison to modern giant squid is invalid, since they are prey, not predator. This fossil bed is being over-interpreted as a trace fossil, with the bones arranged by intent, by an intelligent cephalopod, which they have not seen. Furthermore, a line of discs is being seen as a picture of a cephalopod tentacle, classic pareidolia. This is trivial: dump a pile of Necco wafers on a table, and I'll see a picture of squid suckers. This is a whole series of tenuous and unlikely speculations stacked together to make an ultimately ridiculous hypothesis.
More "facts" and shit here. Whatever. Thanks for ruining my day, ACTUAL science. *SOB*
Original post after the jump.
Holy crap, you guys. Thanks to Slog-tipper Nathan for this CRAZY bit of dinosaur* news!
A new theory suggests that a 100-foot-long cephalopod arranged these bones as a self-portrait after drowning the reptiles.
WHAT?! WHAT?!?!
After considering the more brutal aspects of modern octopus predation, paleontologist Mark McMenamin of Mount Holyoke College came to the conclusion that the shonisaur remains had been deposited in a "kraken" lair by its massive, tentacled squatter...
...The proposed Triassic kraken, which could have been the most intelligent invertebrate ever, arranged the vertebral discs in biserial patterns, with individual pieces nesting in a fitted fashion as if they were part of a puzzle. The arranged vertebrae resemble the pattern of sucker discs on a cephalopod tentacle, with each amphicoelous vertebra strongly resembling a coleoid sucker. Thus the tessellated vertebral disc pavement may represent the earliest known self-portrait.
Shit. Do not mess with krakens.
*cephalopods are not dinosaurs.
