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Ancient Krakens Making Self-Portraits?
First time accepted submitter Sanoj writes "Strange patterns of ichthyosaur bones have been found on an ancient deep-water seabed. One paleontologist has put forward the theory that these could have been the work of giant cephalopods who were eating the swimming dinosaurs and then arranging the vertebrae to resemble their own tentacles. Sound far-fetched? Apparently, the modern octopus also does this."
The researchers are totally off base here. These aren't self-portraits; they're writing. When transliterated into the Roman alphabet, they read "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"
I, for one, welcome our new sea-born cephalopodoid overlords.
I think it is evidence that a historical race known as the Silurian that had culture and art really did exist in that time. Ask the doctor.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I'm not thinking making a homemade scarecrow is a positive evolutionary adaptation.
So there must be some other bonus. Attract a mate?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Cthulhu. He controls the.... ahh!
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Vote Cthulhu 2012. Vote early, vote often.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
> Apparently, the modern octopus also does this."
What, eat ichthyosaurs? No wonder you don't see too many of them around anymore.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Is anyone else disturbed a little by the paleontologist in this article actually calling this thing a "Kraken"? Look I know that may be the cute nickname they use in the office, but it seems a little tawdry for a supposedly serious researcher to use the name of a mythological creature in a public context. Makes me think this guy is a PR-whore looking to promote his work with sensationalism. What's next, someone finding a new type of dinosaur and calling it a "Dragon"?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If the cephalopod was placing one sucker on each vertebrae in some sort of play behavior, a pattern like the sucker pattern on the tentacles would have arisen without this being a self-portrait. Play, while an intelligent activity, is found in animals that do not show evidence of being self-aware.
A normal-sized octopus arranged these vertebrae into a giant tentacle pattern just to freak out everyone
Video mentioned in TFA
This is why Science is so $#@%ing awesome. As Samuel Clemens put it best, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such trifling investment of fact.” This will be a very tough hypothesis to sell, but the researcher says his evidence is ready to take on all skeptics.
There are incredible stories waiting to be revealed in the fossil record and stories we have already uncovered. There's the footprints of Austrolopithecus, which were preserved in volcanic ash, large and small, male and female, close together as if they were huddling--perhaps the male had his arm around his mate, and the female's footprints lopsided as if she were carrying an infant. Imagine what it was like for them, walking fearfully across a landscape raining ash from a distant volcano... This story is drawn in this famous diorama.
Or the Taung child, whose skull bares the scars of an eagle attack. The child was carried away by a bird of prey. A story both fantastic and tragic at once.
Or the stories of Homo erectus , who was the velociraptor of our human ancestors. She was a total badass, which is why I love this statue of her at the Smithsonian Hall of Human Origins carrying a rotting caribou carcass across the Serengeti.
Science has thousands of these stories that we have already discovered, and an infinite supply of them in store for us if we keep exploring. Knowing this, I simply don't understand how people can be so impressed with a book covering a few hundred years of human history and consider it sacred. The sacred is all around us, written in the natural world waiting for us to read it.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
http://xkcd.com/520/
It is a conjecture. In order for this to be a theory, there would have to be evidence the supposed "kraken" existed, which there isn't. Really, this scientist, and I am using the term loosely, is just begging the question.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Ichthyosaurs are not dinosaurs. They are swimming reptiles and just like the pterosaurs and pleisiosaurs they are not dinosaurs. Calling an ichthyosaur a dinosaur is somewhat like calling a bat a rodent.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'm not familiar with the bone-patterning behavior of the octopus. Are they going out their way to do it, or is it just that each tentacle leaves its own pile of bones? Kind of like the aftermath when you share a giant plate of wings at the local sports bar...
Blog post here.
The headline is WAY more sensational than the actual information in the paper, which is full of "appears to" and "looks like" language. This guy also thinks America was discovered in 320 BC because of some scriling on ancient coins. He's also been knows to endorse various crackpots and conspiracy theorists.
No cephelepod evidence was found, no indication that one was involved. One fossil with an odd arrangement of bones may LOOK like tentacle suckers, but that's more likely paradolia than any real connection with an intelligent kracken.
They also claim Ichthyosaurs are 245 million years old... that is clearly more than the 6000 years that have been verified by the Bible.
So this "Science" is just another cult attacking modern christian believes and I'll pray to god tonight that these "scientist" will burn in hell.
I've never heard of octopuses rearranging bones to create art, nor can I find anything online about octopuses doing this, where are they getting this from?
Based on the amount of evidence, I've constructed a "theory" that the Kraken's mother was named Celliphelia, and that she was constantly scolding the Kraken for playing with his food. Kraken was going through teen rebellious stage (normal for octopi which ate dinosaurs), and left home for a period but was lost in a plankton storm, and washed up on a remote island.
See? "Science" is amazing when you apply paleontology to boneless organisms! It opens an entire new career track for creative writing majors.
Gently reply
Goddammit, who went and released the Kraken?
Mark McMenamin is well known in science circles as a crank, a woo woo practitioner, and a media hungry crack-pot.
While it is true that octopuses do build midden piles, there is absolutely no evidence that they are doing anything other than keeping their lairs clean and occasionally building walls to keep predators out.
Funny thing too, there are occasionally fossils of soft bodied creatures found, which is how we know that octopus and squid were around quite a long time ago. I would expect, if this were some sort of gigantic octopus lair, fossilized beaks, sucker rings, and other cephalopod body structures would have been found in the same area as the bones.
If we're going to indulge in a bit of science fiction and pretend that some giant squid or octopus was arranging bones in self-portraiture patterns, why would they make pictures of sucker clubs? Among the cephalopods that are social, communication is performed by shifting colors and changing patterns on the skin and kinesic and proxemic body language.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/the-giant-prehistoric-squid-that-ate-common-sense.ars
Kraken? Kegend? I suppose the kauthor is a full-blown KDE user.
Don't tease the octopus, kids!
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
My theory is a male Kraken arranged the bones to look like the tentacles of a female Kraken
(Using bones to get a bone, so to speak.) (OK, now this needs to be anonymous.)
Pretty much nothing is factually true in that 'research' other than that octopi live in the ocean. For example, modern octopi do NOT arrange bones into 'art' gardens as Mark McManmin asserts. Arstechica sums it up best with the article 'The giant, prehistoric squid that ate common sense' at http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/the-giant-prehistoric-squid-that-ate-common-sense.ars The best quote from Ars is "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."
Looks like the whole thing is bunk http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/the-giant-prehistoric-squid-that-ate-common-sense.ars
This is a UDP joke, I don't care if you get it or not...
This "giant squid" is a complete invention, with NO EVIDENCE whatsoever to support this flamboyant and fanciful idea. Read PZ Myer's discussion: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/10/10/traces-of-a-triassic-kraken/
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/the-giant-prehistoric-squid-that-ate-common-sense/
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1717931900812