Fossils of a strange sea monster found in Australia: is it the mythical Kraken?

The complete head and body of an ancient marine reptile with “turtle fins and long giraffe neck” they were discovered in the rural town of McKinlay, Australia.

Something that, according to scientists, constitutes a “very strange find”.

The fossil was discovered by a property owner in remote western Queensland.

The strange fossil found in Australia

The fossil, which will be analyzed at the Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville, was found by a property owner who has sent images to researchers and archaeologists.

It is the first time in Australia that the head and body of an elasmosaurus, a type of plesiosaur, have been found whole..

Tropical Queensland Museum chief paleontology curator Espen Knutsen said he had been trying to find “such a fossil” for many years.

“They’re very hard to find all over the world, not just in Queensland,” Knutsen said.

Dr Knutsen said the find, believed to be around 100 million years old, It will improve knowledge of the evolution and diversity of species.

“You can spend years researching and not necessarily find what you need to unravel the answers to the questions you ask… but it looks like we’ll be able to draw some lines under some of these unknowns,” said Dr Knutsen.

The questions of the plesiosaurs found in Australia

Christina Chiotakis, a paleontological research assistant at the Queensland Museum, was part of the four-person team that excavated the site over five days in October.

“It was absolutely phenomenal… until you see them you don’t realize how big plesiosaurs can get”Chiotakis said.

At about twenty feet long, experts believe the newly discovered specimen is younger than the plesiosaur fossils in the museum’s collection.

“They are very strange animals,” Chiotakis said. “They had fins like turtles and long necks like giraffes, with tiny tails and large bodies. We’ve been asked if it’s the Kraken. we can’t rule it out“.

What is the mythical Kraken: “the terror of the seas”

The earliest signs of the Kraken are found in Norse mythology. In fact, kraken is a Norwegian word meaning mlegendary sea monster

Spanish biologist Angel Guerra explained how this animal moved from mythology to reality: “The legend began with the Romans and survived until, in 1857, it was discovered that the KrakenIt was actually a giant squid. Several beached specimens began to appear on the beaches, even in the 16th century they brought one to the king of Denmark that smelled of death.”

The myth was created by the Scandinavians in the Middle Ages and it was the Danish biologist Japetus Steenstrup who, based on some pieces preserved in the Natural History Museum in Copenhagen, cHe transformed that beast into the squid prince (Architeuthis Dux) and described it as a cephalopod (animal with tentacles/feet on its head). According to legend, it was considered a real animal.

The truth is, no evidence is conclusive. And for this reason, every time archaeologists discover something called a “sea monster” it is associated with this terror of the seas.