Giant squids are iconic animals. Squids by themselves are intelligent,
powerful, and alien-looking. Giant squids give grandeur, epic scale, and
mystery, having not been seen in their natural habitat until 2004. Although not
as long as a bootlace worm or as heavy as a colossal squid, they have become
legendary. Their corpses and fleeting sightings of their dying have created
legends in places from Norway
to Greece to Japan. The Norse sailors and Vikings prayed for
safety from the Kraken, a beast so powerful it is still part of modern popular
culture.
It was the
Cretaceous that shows an exception. Recently, an Australian squid of the Cretaceous, Boreopeltis, was
found at 6 feet long. Earlier relatives from Germany only
measured a few feet long at most, the largest the size of a human. In
1898, W. N.
Logan identified a 2-foot fossil from Kansas
as a squid pen. More squid pens were
found from Kansas to Mantiboa, an area known
to be the east coast of the Niobrara sea. The Niobrara sea, or Western Interior sea, existed in the
Cretaceous period, cutting the continent in half. Limestone and shale deposits across the Midwest show the wide variety of life. While the marine reptiles and ammonite
cephalopods of the area are iconic, famous, and well-known, the
poorly-preserved squid and octpus are more obscure. Logan called the giant pen Tusoteuthis longa, after
the long gladius. It was, by far, the largest fossil cephalopod since the
Devonian extinction.
More pens have been found since then, some intact, some fragmented. One
pen was 6 feet long. If it had the same proportions as Architeuthis, its modern
counterpart, this would mean it was more than 30 feet long, one of the largest
cephalopods ever. That’s a big if,
however. You see, the pen is far more similar in shape to that of the Vampire
Squid, which is not a true squid but more related to the octopus; it even has 8
arms. Vampire squids today are reddish black with eyes that are blue in high
light and red in low light, have a webbing between their tentacles, and are
only about a foot long. They live in the very deep sea, eating floating carrion
and small squid and fish, and emit dim light from their photophores and
bioluminescent mucus.
So, it’s very likely Tusoteuthis would have had the same proportions,
albeit not the same physical adaptations. Using those proportions, it would be
20 feet long and 10 feet wide. The pen, however, is much denser and stronger
than the wispy ones of the vampire and giant squids. This suggests an animal
that could swim at fast speeds. While the vampire squid is relatively sluggish
and docile, enveloping prey with its webbed arms, the giant squid is not. Architeuthis has been observed
aggressively devouring smaller squid and stomach contents include fish, squid, and
even sharks. It’s probably an ambush
predator-slowly swimming with its huge eyes scanning the blackness then swiftly
descending on prey and grabbing them with its long tentacles.
Tusoteuthis, however, lived in a shallower sea, and its pen was very
robust in comparison. This would mean shallow waters where it needed more
muscle. The sea was full of predators and prey-fish and reptiles of all sorts
took advantage of the rich plankton and plankton-eating prey. It’s possible it was a fast, aggressive predator
that ate large fish and sea reptiles.
It did have predators of its own-an immature pen was found embedded in
the gullet of a fish. This fish, Cimolicthys, was a fast-moving predator
superficially resembling a barracuda.
The specimen has the broken pen stuck in the ribcage near the shoulder
and a piece puncturing its gills. So, by eating the squid, the
fish choked on the pen and drowned. People die from choking on fishbones, but
it appears that this fish choked in turn on a squid!
Another specimen has large punctures, indicating it was badly bitten.
Only one predator was big enough to have inflicted the damage-the apex predator
and America’s
largest lizard of all time, Tylosaurus.
Tylosaurus teeth, toothmarks, and stomach contents have suggested that
this mosasaur devoured any prey it could find, and no doubt even the biggest
mollusk of the Mesozoic would not be a match for it.
Tusoteuthis might have had a sister species. A huge beak was discovered
in the Japanese island
of Hokkaido, a beak of
similar dimensions to today’s giant squid. It has been named Yezoteuthis after the
ancient name of Hokkaido.
The shape suggests a true squid, but no gladius or impression has been found.
Hopefully, more of both these kraken will be found!
I’m afraid there’s not much else to say about Tusoteuthis and so this is
very short blog this time. It has made a single appearance in the IMAX film Sea
Monsters, making a cameo as one of the many denizens of the Western Interior
sea, simply swimming through the blue. You can find Tusoteuthis fossils in the Sternberg Museum
in Hays, Kansas, University of
Colorado Museum in Boulder,
Colorado, and the Canadian
Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden, Mantiboa. The reason this species is so obscure is
because we only have the gladius.
Mollusks don’t have skeletons, after all, so it would take an impression
in the sediment, as well as the beak and pen, for a fossil cephalopod to be
best understood. Like its modern counterpart, it is enigmatic, mysterious,
powerful, alien, and fascinating.
So anyway, Hollywood, give this guy a break. Museums, put him on display. Toy companies, here’s a new fresh face. Authors, think about the crap you’re writing and how this genus could perk up the place. And remember, shop Tusoteuthis where you work or play.
Here’s some great pages on it, especially Michael Everhart’s excellent
Oceans of Kansas website
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