A giant sea monster, the likes of the mythological kraken, may have taken out ichthyosaurs the size of school buses, arranging their vertebrae in curious linear patterns with nearly geometric patterns (shown here). The arranged vertebrae resemble the pattern of suckers on a cephalopod's tentacle. 
 
 This article was updated on Oct. 11 at 10:42 a.m. ET 
 
 A giant sea monster, the likes of the mythological kraken, may have swum Earth's ancient oceans, snagging what was thought to be the sea's top predators — school bus-size ichthyosaurs with fearsome teeth. 
 
 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, according to study researcher Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. [Rumor or Reality: The Creatures of Cryptozoology] 
 
 "It is known that the modern octopus will pile the remains of its prey in a midden and play with and manipulate those pieces," McMenamin said during a telephone interview. 
 
 There is no direct evidence for the beast, though McMenamin suggests that's because it was soft-bodied and didn't stand the test of time; even so, to make a firm case for its existence one would want to find more direct evidence. 
 
 "No direct evidence of large cephalopods, in fact very little data at all, is problematic for proposing such a radical explanation," Glenn Storrs, curator of vertebrate paleontology at Cincinnati Museum Center, told LiveScience in an email. "Circumstantial evidence is not enough." Ichthyosaur vertebra pavements are known in shallow water settings elsewhere and the case for a deep water environment at Berlin- 
 
 Storrs added, "On top of this, the specimens are not well preserved in their current setting, thus the arrangement, 'etching' and bone breakage may have alternate explanations. To my mind, this hypothesis is like looking at clouds - being able to see what you desire." 
 
 McMenamin presented his work Monday (Oct. 10) at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis. 
 
 Cause of death 
 
 The ichthyosaur, Shonisaurus popularis, was a school bus-size predatory reptile thought to rule the Triassic seas. Credit: Dmitry Bogdanov, Creative Commons license. 
 
 Evidence for the kraken and its gruesome attacks comes from markings on the bones of the remains of nine 45-foot (14 meter) ichthyosaurs of the species Shonisaurus popularis, which lived during the Triassic, a period that lasted from 248 million to 206 million years ago. The beasts were the Triassic version of today's predatory giant squid-eating sperm whales. 
 
 McMenamin was interested in solving a long-standing puzzle over the cause of death of the S. popularis individuals at the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada. An expert on the site, Charles Lewis Camp of U.C. Berkeley, suggested in the 1950s that the ichthyosaurs succumbed to an accidental stranding or a toxic plankton bloom. However, nobody has been able to prove the beasts died in shallow water, with more recent work on the rocks around the fossils by Jennifer Hogler, then at the University of California Museum of Paleontoloy, suggesting they died in a deepwater environment. [See image of kraken's lair] 
 
 "I was aware that anytime there is controversy about depth, there is probably something interesting going on," McMenamin said. And when he and his daughter arrived at the park, they were struck by the remains' strangeness, particularly "a very odd configuration of bones." 
 
 The etching on the bones suggested the shonisaurs were not all killed and buried at the same time, he said. It also looked like the bones had been purposefully rearranged, likely carried to the "kraken's lair" after they had been killed. A similar behavior has been seen in modern octopus. 
 
 The markings and rearrangement of the S. popularis bones suggests an octopus-like creature (like a kraken) either drowned the ichthyosaurs or broke their necks, according to McMenamin. 
 
 The arranged vertebrae also seemed to resemble the pattern of sucker disks on a cephalopod's tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a sucker made by a member of the Coleoidea, which includes octopuses, squid, cuttlefish and their relatives. The researchers suggest this pattern reveals a self-portrait of the mysterious beast. 
 
 The perfect crime? 
 
 Next, McMenamin wondered if an octopus-like creature could realistically have taken out the huge swimming predatory reptiles. Evidence is in their favor, it seems. Video taken by staff at the Seattle Aquarium showed that a large octopus in one of their large tanks had been killing the sharks. [On the Brink: A Gallery of Wild Sharks] 
 
 "It would have been very similar to the way that the Pacific Octopus was killing sharks at the Seattle Aquarium, the main difference being that the animals were scaled up to enormous size," McMenamin told LiveScience, adding that, "ichthyosaurs are air breathers and can be drowned." 
 
 McMenamin said. More supporting evidence: There were many more broken ribs seen in the shonisaur fossils than would seem accidental, as well as evidence of twisted necks. 
 
 "It was either drowning them or breaking their necks," McMenamin said. 
 
 So where did this kraken go? Since octopuses are mostly soft-bodied they don't fossilize well and scientists wouldn't expect to find their remains from so long ago. Only their beaks, or mouthparts, are hard and the chances of those being preserved nearby are very low, according to the researchers. 
 
 With such circumstanial evidence of "the crime," McMenamin expects his interpretation will draw skeptics. And, in fact, it has. Brian Switek, a research associate at the New Jersey State Museum, writing for Wired.com, is extremely skeptical, writing, "The McMenamins' entire case is based on peculiar inferences about the site. It is a case of reading the scattered bones as if they were tea leaves able to tell someone’s fortune. Rather than being distributed through the bonebed by natural processes related to decay and preservation, the McMenamins argue that the Shonisaurus bones were intentionally arrayed in a 'midden' by a huge cephalopod nearly 100 feet long." (McMenamin worked with his wife, Dianna Schulte McMenamin on the study.) 
 
 As for how McMenamin would respond to critics: "We're ready for this. We have a very good case," he said. 
 
 Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook. ||||| We have a serious problem with science journalism. 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, I kept hearing rumors of a bombastic, super-hyped presentation due to be presented at this year’s Geological Society of America meeting in Minneapolis. The scuttlebutt was that someone was going to give a talk about a super-intelligent, predatory squid which fed on huge ichthyosaurs during the Triassic. Fascinating, if true, but the reason that all the paleontologists I met were chuckling was because there was not a shred of actual evidence to back up the claims. Apparently, whoever was set to give the talk had apparently stayed up late watching It Came From Beneath the Sea too many times. 
 
 Now the talk has officially been given and the scant details of the proposition have been oozed out into the newswires by way of a press release. Let me be clear — there is no paper yet or anything specific for those not in attendance at GSA to look at. This fact will be key to the media nonsense which has been swirling around the web today. 
 
 You can find the skinny through ScienceDaily and the official GSA abstract, but the basic story is as follows. In central Nevada — among the roughly 215 million-year-old, Late Triassic rocks of what has come to be known as Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park — paleontologists have previously found the remains of numerous marine reptiles called Shonisaurus popularis. These were some of the largest ichthyosaurs to have ever swum the ancient seas, and this particular site has been of interest to paleontologists because multiple individuals have been found together at some localities. Why these individuals were found together in a mass death assemblage is unknown — explanations have ranged from stranding to poisoning by a prehistoric red tide — but now Mark McMenamin and wife Dianna Schulte-McMenamin of Mount Holyoke College have suggested that the graveyard is actually a cache of bones collected and arranged by a squid the likes of which has never been seen. 
 
 There is no direct evidence for the existence of the animal the McMenamins call “the kraken.” No exceptionally preserved body, no fossilized tentacle hooks, no beak — nothing. The McMenamins’ entire case is based on peculiar inferences about the site. It is a case of reading the scattered bones as if they were tea leaves able to tell someone’s fortune. Rather than being distributed through the bonebed by natural processes related to decay and preservation, the McMenamins argue that the Shonisaurus bones were intentionally arrayed in a “midden” by a huge cephalopod nearly 100 feet long. (How the length of the imaginary animal was estimated is anyone’s guess.) But that’s not all — the McMenamins speculate that his “kraken” played with its food: 
 
 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. 
 
 I guess a giant, ichthyosaur-eating “kraken” wasn’t enough. A squid with a stroke of artistic genius was clearly the simplest explanation for the formation of the bonebeds. *facepalm* 
 
 Of course, the McMenamins were not the first people to ponder how the ichthyosaurs came to rest at the site. Paleontologist David Bottjer wrote a summary of the bonebed — largely based on the work of colleague Jennifer Hogler – for the book Exceptional Fossil Preservation. As a whole, the fossil deposits indicate that different Shonisaurus specimens died and became preserved in different ways. Some skeletons were scattered by currents and scavengers, and other, more-complete individuals — such as those at the Fossil House Quarry — were well preserved and found in multi-individual groups. In this latter case, a lack of encrusting invertebrates would seem to indicate that the skeletons came to be preserved in deep water environments with low levels of dissolved oxygen. The initial cause of death for the marine reptiles is unknown, but there is no good evidence that the exceptional sites were, to borrow from Ringo Starr, giant killer octopus gardens. 
 
 Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Esteemed scientist and science communicator Carl Sagan reminded us of that throughout his career, but the message didn’t sink in at some newdesks. All you have to do is track the news of the “kraken” to see that recycling press releases often counts for “science news” right now. Jeanna Bryner of LiveScience swallowed the big squid story whole and had her version regurgitated at FOX and CBS News. Dean Praetorius of the Huffington Post, Houston Chronicle’s “Sci Guy” Eric Berger, and TG Daily’s Kate Taylor also took the bait. Who could resist a sensational, super-sized squid? Only Cyriaque Lamar of io9 sounded a minor note of skepticism — “But the possibility of finding that which is essentially a gargantuan mollusk’s macaroni illustration?”, Lamar wrote, “That’s the kind of glorious crazy you hope is reality.” Leave it to science bloggers like PZ Myers to point out how ridiculous this media feeding frenzy is. 
 
 But what really kills me about this story is the fact that no reporter went to get a second opinion. Each and every story appears to be based directly off the press release and uses quotes directly from that document. No outside expert was contacted for another opinion in any of the stories — standard practice in science journalism — and, frankly, all the stories reek of churnalism. What does it say about the general quality of science reporting when major news sources are content to repackage sensationalist, evidence-lite speculations and print them without further thought or comment? Whether you think the “kraken” story should have been reported or ignored due to lack of evidence, the fact remains that journalists should have actually done their jobs rather than act as facilitators of hype. You don’t have to be a paleontologist to realize that there’s something fishy about claims that there was a giant, ichthyosaur-crunching squid when there is no body to be seen. 
 
 Top Image: Shonisaurus vertebrae from Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. These bones are said by the McMenamins to be arranged in a pattern matching the tentacle pattern of a giant cephalopod, but I think that’s just pareidolia. From the GSA press release. 
 
 Further reading: I wrote an article for Smithsonian a few months back about how the giant squid — or kraken, if you like — was transformed from a mythical creature to a scientific reality. Check it out here: The Giant Squid: Dragon of the Deep 
 
 References: 
 
 Bottjer, D. “Berlin-Ichthyosaur: Preserving Some of the Earth’s Largest Marine Vertebrates” in Bottjer, D.; Etter, W.; Hagadorn, J.; and Tang, C. 2002. Exceptional Fossil Preservation: A Unique View on the Evolution of Marine Life. Columbia University Press: New York. 
 
 Hogler, J. 1992. Taphonomy and paleoecology of Shonisaurus popularis (Reptilia: Ichthyosauria). PALAIOS, Vol. 7 (1): 108-117 ||||| Long before whales, the oceans of Earth were roamed by a very different kind of air-breathing leviathan. Snaggle-toothed ichthyosaurs larger than school buses swam at the top of the Triassic Period ocean food chain, or so it seemed before Mount Holyoke College paleontologist Mark McMenamin took a look at some of their remains in Nevada. Now he thinks there was an even larger and more cunning sea monster that preyed on ichthyosaurs: a 'kraken' of such mythological proportions it would have sent Captain Nemo running for dry land. 
 
 McMenamin is presenting the results of his work on Oct. 10 at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis. 
 
 The evidence is at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada, where McMenamin and his daughter spent a few days this summer. It's a site where the remains of nine 45-foot (14-meter) ichthyosaurs, of the species Shonisaurus popularis can be found. These were the Triassic's counterpart to today's predatory giant squid-eating sperm whales. But the fossils at the Nevada site have a long history of perplexing researchers, including the world's expert on the site: the late Charles Lewis Camp of U.C. Berkeley. 
 
 "Charles Camp puzzled over these fossils in the 1950s," said McMenamin. "In his papers he keeps referring to how peculiar this site is. We agree, it is peculiar." 
 
 Camp's interpretation was that the fossils probably represented death by an accidental stranding or from a toxic plankton bloom. But no one had ever been able to prove that the beasts died in shallow water. In fact more recent work on the rocks around the fossils suggest it was a deep water environment, which makes neatly arranged carcasses even more mysterious. 
 
 This question -- shallow or deep ocean death -- is what attracted McMenamin to the site. 
 
 "I was aware that anytime there is controversy about depth, there is probably something interesting going on," McMenamin said. And when they arrived at the remote state park and started looking at the fossils, McMenamin was struck by their strangeness. 
 
 "It became very clear that something very odd was going on there," said McMenamin. "It was a very odd configuration of bones." 
 
 First of all, the different degrees of etching on the bones suggested that the shonisaurs were not all killed and buried at the same time. It also looked like the bones had been purposefully rearranged. That it got him thinking about a particular modern predator that is known for just this sort of intelligent manipulation of bones. 
 
 "Modern octopus will do this," McMenamin said. What if there was an ancient, very large sort of octopus, like the kraken of mythology. "I think that these things were captured by the kraken and taken to the midden and the cephalopod would take them apart." 
 
 In the fossil bed, some of the shonisaur vertebral disks are arranged in curious linear patterns with almost geometric regularity, McMenamin explained.The proposed Triassic kraken, which could have been the most intelligent invertebrate ever, arranged the vertebral discs in double line patterns, with individual pieces nesting in a fitted fashion as if they were part of a puzzle. 
 
 Even more creepy: The arranged vertebrae resemble the pattern of sucker discs on a cephalopod tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a coleoid sucker. In other words, the vertebral disc "pavement" seen at the state park may represent the earliest known self portrait. 
 
 But could an octopus really have taken out such huge swimming predatory reptiles? No one would have believed such a tale until the staff of the Seattle Aquarium set up a video camera at night a few years ago to find out what was killing the sharks in one of their large tanks. What they were shocked to discover was that a large octopus they had in the same tank was the culprit. The video of one of these attacks is available on the web to anyone who uses the search terms "shark vs octopus." 
 
 "We think that this cephalopod in the Triassic was doing the same thing," said McMenamin. Among the evidences of the kraken attacks are many more ribs broken in the shonisaur fossils than would seem accidental and the twisted necks of the ichthyosaurs. "It was either drowning them or breaking their necks." 
 
 Of course, it's the perfect Triassic crime because octopuses are mostly soft-bodied and don't fossilize well. Only their beaks, or mouth parts, are hard and the chances of those being preserved nearby are very low. That means the evidence for the murderous Kraken is circumstantial, which may leave some scientists rather skeptical. But McMenamin is not worried. 
 
 "We're ready for this," he said. "We have a very good case."
– Sasquatch should be really nervous right now... First, Siberian officials announced they had proof that Yeti exists. Now a Massachusetts paleontologist says he has indirect evidence that the fearsome kraken once roamed the seas. At the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, Mark McMenamin yesterday posited that the 100-foot-long mythological sea monster was soft-bodied, which would explain the absence of bones and other fossil evidence. But he believes that the bones of nine ichthyosaurs at the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada point to the kraken's existence, reports LiveScience. The markings on the bones of the 45-foot ichthyosaurs at the park, along with the larger than expected number of broken ribs and the bones' "very odd configuration," led McMenamin to believe that the ichthyosaurs had likely been killed then carried to a single lair, likely by an octopus-type creature that had either drowned them or twisted their necks. Science Daily also reports that McMenamin observed that the fossils' vertebrae seem to be arranged in a way that mimics the pattern of the sucker discs on a cephalopod tentacle. LiveScience notes that plenty of people are calling his circumstantial evidence hooey. Click to read one such reaction, a Wired piece titled "The Giant, Prehistoric Squid That Ate Common Sense."