Release the Kraken!…’s proof of existence….
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
The Kraken is a legendary giant squid that terrorized sailors at sea. Fossils from hundreds of millions of years ago suggest that it may actually have been more than a legend.
Shin Ikegami and team at Hokkaido University reconstructed fossil jaws from ancient octopuses using AI. Scratches on those jaws revealed that these beasts crunched shells and even bones.
Researchers compared jaw size with modern species to estimate body size. Turns out, some reached sixty feet long! Yikes!
So was the Kraken real? Well… something like it DID exist long before us. Let’s just say… I’m glad WE weren’t on the menu!
Reference: Ikegami, S., Mutterlose, J., Sugiura, K., Takeda, Y., Derin, M. O., Kubota, A., Tainaka, K., Harada, T., Nishida, H., & Iba, Y. (2026). Earliest octopuses were giant top predators in Cretaceous oceans. Science, 392(6796), 406–410. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aea6285