11 days until the paperback release of When the Earth Was Green

186 days until the release of Tyrant Lizard Queen

I’d love to believe in 60-foot-long Cretaceous octopus. The art released with the new research by paleontologist Shin Ikegami sells the idea, dramatic imagery of immense and squishy-bodied cephalopods longer than even the largest Tylosaurus. Finally, some fossil evidence to back up It Came From Beneath the Sea. But, as has happened before with newly-crowned fossil giants, Nanaimoteuthis probably wasn’t as big as the new Science study proposes.

Ocean scientist Craig McClain has already broken down some of the issues with the new study. In short, all we have are some large beak fossils. They are impressive. The largest Nanaimoteuthis beak fossils are larger than those of extant giant squid - although it’s difficult to tell if this reflects larger overall size or different, more robust beaks. We have no other direct fossil evidence to check. So while it’s possible to say a large beak implies a large mantle, which would imply a large body, this is no different from estimating the size of a large dinosaur from a single tooth. Maybe the organism could be as large as guessed, but it could just as easily be much smaller. We need more measurements to get a more refined, testable estimate, and we lack that evidence.

I don’t doubt that Nanaimoteuthis was a big cephalopod. Even if it was more or less the size of a giant squid, that’s still quite impressive and tells us something new about Cretaceous ecosystems. Maybe marine reptiles chased after big squid just the same way that sperm whales do today. But Ikegami and colleagues propose the opposite - that the Cretaceous octopus were apex predators.

The beaks of Nanaimoteuthis show some extensive wear. Whatever these cephalopods were eating, it was hard. Ikegami and coauthors suggest that the wear came from vertebrate bones, the hard parts of plesiosaurs and mosasaurs that Nanaimoteuthis supposedly caught, the octopus said to be “super intelligent” given its modern relations. But the Cretaceous seas were also full of shelled ammonites, reef-building clams the size of toilet seats, and other hard invertebrate prey. I’m honestly a little surprised Science didn’t ask the authors to tone back their speculation, given the hypothesis is essentially evidence-free. We have fossil beaks, insufficient to tell us exactly how big Nanaimoteuthis - much less how smart the cephalopod might have been.

At least now we know to look. Not only for large beaks, or perhaps some exceptional fossils that outline the shape of Nanaimoteuthis. But we can look for radula damage on Cretaceous invertebrates, or other signs of what a large cephalopod may have eaten. We’re unlikely to find exactly what we hope for, but, then again, the fossil record is endlessly surprising. We know big cephalopods were around at the end of the Cretaceous. Now we can start asking the deeper questions.

Scribblings

• Imagine a moonlit Carboniferous night, 325 million years ago. A huge, shelled mollusk rises from the bottom to gaze at the night through an ancient eye. My story, “The Moon Through a Pinhole,” leads off the first ever InverteFest anthology - with amazing art by Aspenhearted that also became the book’s cover. It’s out now, and available free.

• I’m getting into stop motion! I’m experimenting and learning, but I’m pretty happy with my first test with a Beasts of the Mesozoic Zuniceratops. You can check it out over on my Instagram.

• How does the new Walking With Dinosaurs hold up to the original? I like it even better. Check out my review of the first episode in this week’s I Want My DinoTV.

• Some fossils take your breath away. In this week’s new article for paid subscribers, I gush about an embryonic Lystrosaurus that is just the cutest little fossilized thing.

• Last week’s premium article, about a short-snouted Triassic croc that was hiding in museum collections for decades, is up on my blog. If you want to support more articles like this, just $5 a month gets you original reporting, dino media reviews, and the archive.

Ear Perks

• michiums’ “Queer Existence is Eternal” patch is gorgeous. You should grab them while they’re still in stock.

• Happy 80th, John Waters!

• If you like your horror queer, dripping, mycological, and, above all, splattery, you’ll like Moonflow.

• I know, it’s my own fault for not listening to Shonen Knife earlier. But it’s perfect that the first song of theirs I threw on was “It’s a New Find.”