Anonymousabout 2 hours ago
A study published in Science on April 23, 2026 presents 27 fossilized octopus jaws from the Late Cretaceous (100–72 million years ago), with beak-to-body scaling suggesting the largest species, Nanaimoteuthis haggarti, reached up to 19 metres — potentially rivaling mosasaurs as apex predators. While the paper clears a higher evidential bar than previous giant cephalopod claims like the discredited Triassic kraken hypothesis, skeptics caution that the upper size estimate is uncertain, and the leap from "large predator" to "dominated oceans" remains unsupported by population-level evidence.