[quote=" http://www.world-science.net/othernews/111010_ichthyosaur.htm"]
[c]THE WORLD SCIENCE: October 10, 2011
[size=150]Did a sea monster make an artwork… out of bones?[/size]
Courtesy of the Geological Society of America and World Science staff: Oct. 10, 2011[/c]
[float=right][youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec5QQ9486jo[/youtube][/float][c][img]http://www.world-science.net/images2/1165-GeogyphU-250.jpg[/img]
[b][color=#0000FF]Fossilized shonisaur vertebrae at Berlin-
Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada.
(Courtesy Mark McMenamin)[/color][/b][/c]
<<In what must be one of the strangest theories to find its way out of the staid world of paleontology in a long time, researchers claim a gigantic octopus millions of years ago may have made a jigsaw-puzzle-like artwork out of its victims’ bones.
As if that weren’t enough to raise eybrows, there is more. According to the theory, the victims were not just anyone, but giant sea monsters in its own right—a tribute to the truly staggering size of the sticky assailant.
Had enough? But there is even more. The artwork was, it would seem, not just any old doodle, but a sort of Triassic self-portrait.
A husband-and-wife research team is presenting the proposal to explain the neat, almost systematic arrangement of bones in a sea reptile fossil that has puzzled scientists for over half a century. “We’re ready” for the skeptical questioning to begin, said geologist and paleontologist Mark McMenamin of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, who conducted the new research with his wife, Dianna Schulte-McMenamin, also of the college. They admit their case is circumstantial, but they point to evidence including modern cases of octopuses killing sharks; various feats of octopus intelligence; the fact that octopuses commonly leave piles of shells and bones in their dens from consumed prey; and the observation that they sometimes manipulate such remains. They are presenting their proposal Oct. 10 at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis.
Around 200 million to 250 million years ago, the so-called Triassic period, predatory, dinosaur-like reptiles called ichthyosaurs prowled the oceans. Nine fossils of these beasts, about as long as school buses, lie at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada. They have a long history of perplexing researchers, including the world’s expert on the site, the late Charles Lewis Camp of the University of California at Berkeley. “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 speculated that the beasts had died from an accidental stranding or a toxic plankton bloom. But no one has proven the water was shallow, and more recent work on the surrounding rocks suggest it was deep, McMenamin notes.
When the McMenamin and his daughter visited the fossils at the remote state park, “it became very clear that something very odd was going on,” said McMenamin. “It was a very odd configuration of bones.” Evidence sugested the shonisaurs weren’t all buried at the same time, he said. More strangely, it looked like the bones had been purposefully rearranged. That it got him thinking about a modern predator known for this sort of intelligent manipulation of bones. “Modern octopus will do this,” McMenamin said.
McMenamin likens the proposed ancient octopus to the legendary “kraken,” an octopus-like sea monster with arms the length of ships and claimed to have prowled off the coast of Norway in the 1750s. The prehistoric animal must have been twice the length of the shonisaurs to kill them, he contends.
In the fossil bed, some of the shonisaur vertebral disks are arranged in curious patterns with almost geometric regularity, McMenamin noted: the vertebral discs are in double line patterns, with individual pieces nesting in a fitted way as though part of a puzzle. The proposed Triassic kraken “could have been the most intelligent invertebrate ever,” say the researchers in their report. Even creepier: The arranged vertebrae resemble the pattern of sucker discs on an octopus tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a sucker. In other words, the vertebral disc “pavement” seen at the state park “may represent the earliest known self portrait,” the report adds.
Could an octopus really have taken out such huge predatory reptiles? No one would have believed it until 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 tanks, McMenamin argues. The aquarium staff was shocked to learn an octopus was the culprit. Video of one of these attacks can be found online by using the search terms “shark vs octopus.” The “Triassic kraken” was probably “doing the same thing,” said McMenamin. Among the pieces of evidence, he adds, are many more ribs broken in the shonisaur fossils than would seem accidental and the twisted necks. “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 mouth parts are hard. That means the evidence for the murderous Kraken is circumstantial, which may leave some scientists skeptical. But McMenamin said he isn’t worried: “we have a very good case.”>>[/quote][quote=" http://timmessick.wordpress.com/2009/08/18/ichthyosaurs/"]
Ichthyosaurs
Posted on August 18, 2009 by Tim Messick
[float=right][img3="Shonisaurus vertebrae (round shapes at left) and ribs (linear shapes at right)."]http://timmessick.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/dsc_15257-fossils12.jpg?w=650&h=403[/img3][/float]
<<I’m standing on a hillside in the Shoshone Mountains of central Nevada, nearly 7,000 feet above sea level, 280 miles from the ocean, at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. At my feet are the fossilized remains of several huge, ocean-dwelling reptiles. They died one day in the Triassic, probably together, perhaps poisoned by a toxic bloom of red algae, then sank to the ocean floor, far out on the continental shelf of a nascent North America that had not yet drifted apart from Pangea.
The reptiles’ bodies were covered in mud, and while the earth circled the sun another 210 million times, the continental shelf edged up onto dry land, North America drifted from the tropics to mid-temperate latitudes, the Shoshone Mountains rose, miners came and found huge vertebrae on the ground (which some used as dinner plates), and Shonisaurus popularis became the Nevada state fossil.
Today the Ichthyosaurs and the miners are gone from this place, but vestiges of both linger. All things may be impermanent, but most things get recycled, and traces of things past can resurface unexpextedly after a very, very long time.>>[/quote][quote=" http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/10/lair-ancient-kraken-sea-monster-possibly-discovered/"]
[float=right][img3=""]http://www.foxnews.com/static/managed/img/Scitech/kraken-lair-fossils_604x500.jpg[/img3][/float]Lair of Ancient 'Kraken' Sea Monster Possibly Discovered
By Jeanna Bryner: October 10, 2011
<<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 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.
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. McMenamin is scheduled to present his work Monday (Oct. 10) at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis.
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.
Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts 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, and recent work on the rocks around the fossils suggests they died in a deepwater environment, McMenamin said. "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."
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.
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. he 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.
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]
"We think that this cephalopod in the Triassic was doing the same thing," 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. Though his case is circumstantial, and likely to draw skepticism from other scientists, McMenamin said: "We're ready for this. We have a very good case."[/quote]