Triassic Monster Octopus Makes Self Portrait With His Victim

“Charles 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.”

“It became very clear that something very odd was going on there,” said McMenamin. “It was a very odd configuration of bones.”

First of all, the different degrees of etching on the bones suggested that the shonisaurs were not all killed and buried at the same time. It also looked like the bones had been purposefully rearranged. That it got him thinking about a particular modern predator that is known for just this sort of intelligent manipulation of bones.

“Modern octopus will do this,” McMenamin said. What if there was an ancient, very large sort of octopus, like the kraken of mythology. “I think that these things were captured by the kraken and taken to the midden and the cephalopod would take them apart.”

In the fossil bed, some of the shonisaur vertebral disks are arranged in curious linear patterns with almost geometric regularity, McMenamin explained.The proposed Triassic kraken, which could have been the most intelligent invertebrate ever, arranged the vertebral discs in double line patterns, with individual pieces nesting in a fitted fashion as if they were part of a puzzle.
Even more creepy: The arranged vertebrae resemble the pattern of sucker discs on a cephalopod tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a coleoid sucker. In other words, the vertebral disc “pavement” seen at the state park may represent the earliest known self portrait.

Saw this on many places some time ago. You can see the original source here.
While I still don't think that it is really some sort of self portrait, the idea of a super intelligent octopus dominating a period as an apex predator sure is fascinating!
For the ones who still haven't seen, here is a video of an Octopus vs Shark fight.



But something else caught my eye on this news. Some months ago I saw the idea of super octopuses dominating remot past sea somewhere else:

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Click the images to view


In the manga the "enhanced" octopus isn't really humanoid but assumed the human form to take advantage of the situation.