Really cool! But, er...

[steuard]

In a brief lull after lunch today, I happened upon a link to a cool-sounding science story: Giant Triassic Kraken Lair Discovered!. The gist of the story is that there's a fossil bed of ichthyosaurs in Nevada that's puzzling: nine bus-sized fossils were found in the same place, with no sign of how they all died. There's evidence that the location

Comments

[kirinn]

"(And why are they issuing press releases about this sort of raw speculation?)"

Well, you're blogging about it. There's always a fine line to dance between credibility and free publicity.

Portraiture aside, though, the giant kraken theory does seem intriguingly plausible. Would be interesting to hear some more actual paleontologists weigh in.

[steuard]

Hmm. I'm always nervous about that argument in the sciences, where your credibility is absolutely everything. If the scientific community learns to see your organization as "the artistic mega-squid people", serious scientists will start avoiding you to preserve their own reputations.

I guess what bothers me about the kraken theory (even without artistic intelligence) is that it's so clearly pure speculation, based on very scant evidence. It sounds like the idea isn't contradicted by the evidence, but inventing a beast of unprecedented size that routinely hunted (and collected) bus-sized (otherwise-)apex-predators seems a bit extreme. One has to wonder whether there couldn't be some sort of natural ocean current that could accomplish the same thing. (Goodness knows there are enough phenomena that we don't understand today even when we can see them ourselves: rogue waves, for example.)

[akjdg]

But, what other possible explanation is there? Ridiculously large krakens are a surprisingly common solution to otherwise-perplexing conundrums in the life sciences. Why even in my work as an engineer, I've come across at least three situations in remote parts of Alaska where humungoid krakens are the only possible explanation for things I've seen. Of course, I have to come up with more mundane and acceptable explanations for these things, lest I become ostracized as that crazy kraken-loving engineer. But secretly, I know the truth. I am just happy to see that someone is willing to call a spade a spade at long last.

i.e., ditto. :)