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. These were some of the largest ichthyosaurs to have ever swum the ancient seas, and this particular site has been of interest to paleontologists because multiple individuals have been found together at some localities. The kraken, which would've been nearly 100 feet (30 meters) long, or twice the size of the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis, likely drowned or broke the necks of the ichthyosaurs before dragging the corpses to its lair, akin to an octopus's midden, according to study researcher Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. There is no direct evidence for the beast, though McMenamin suggests that's because it was soft-bodied and didn't stand the test of time; even so, to make a firm case for its existence one would want to find more direct evidence. That means the evidence for the murderous Kraken is circumstantial, which may leave some scientists rather skeptical. Ichthyosaur vertebra pavements are known in shallow water settings elsewhere and the case for a deep water environment at Berlin- 
 
 Storrs added, "On top of this, the specimens are not well preserved in their current setting, thus the arrangement, 'etching' and bone breakage may have alternate explanations. While making the rounds among a few California museums late last month, I kept hearing rumors of a bombastic, super-hyped presentation due to be presented at this year’s Geological Society of America meeting in Minneapolis. The scuttlebutt was that someone was going to give a talk about a super-intelligent, predatory squid which fed on huge ichthyosaurs during the Triassic. Evidence for the kraken and its gruesome attacks comes from markings on the bones of the remains of nine 45-foot (14 meter) ichthyosaurs of the species Shonisaurus popularis, which lived during the Triassic, a period that lasted from 248 million to 206 million years ago. These were the Triassic's counterpart to today's predatory giant squid-eating sperm whales. In central Nevada — among the roughly 215 million-year-old, Late Triassic rocks of what has come to be known as Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park — paleontologists have previously found the remains of numerous marine reptiles called Shonisaurus popularis. But the fossils at the Nevada site have a long history of perplexing researchers, including the world's expert on the site: the late Charles Lewis Camp of U.C. Camp's interpretation was that the fossils probably represented death by an accidental stranding or from a toxic plankton bloom. However, nobody has been able to prove the beasts died in shallow water, with more recent work on the rocks around the fossils by Jennifer Hogler, then at the University of California Museum of Paleontoloy, suggesting they died in a deepwater environment. [See image of kraken's lair] 
 
 "I was aware that anytime there is controversy about depth, there is probably something interesting going on," McMenamin said. And when he and his daughter arrived at the park, they were struck by the remains' strangeness, particularly "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, likely carried to the "kraken's lair" after they had been killed. Of course, it's the perfect Triassic crime because octopuses are mostly soft-bodied and don't fossilize well. Next, McMenamin wondered if an octopus-like creature could realistically have taken out the huge swimming predatory reptiles. No one would have believed such a tale until the staff of the Seattle Aquarium set up a video camera at night a few years ago to find out what was killing the sharks in one of their large tanks. "We think that this cephalopod in the Triassic was doing the same thing," said McMenamin. Among the evidences of the kraken attacks are many more ribs broken in the shonisaur fossils than would seem accidental and the twisted necks of the ichthyosaurs. "It was either drowning them or breaking their necks," McMenamin said. Only their beaks, or mouthparts, are hard and the chances of those being preserved nearby are very low, according to the researchers. A big one, in fact, and today that problem takes the form of a giant, prehistoric squid with tentacles so formidable that it has sucked the brains right out of staff writers’ heads. Brian Switek, a research associate at the New Jersey State Museum, writing for Wired.com, is extremely skeptical, writing, "The McMenamins' entire case is based on peculiar inferences about the site. It is a case of reading the scattered bones as if they were tea leaves able to tell someone’s fortune. Rather than being distributed through the bonebed by natural processes related to decay and preservation, the McMenamins argue that the Shonisaurus bones were intentionally arrayed in a 'midden' by a huge cephalopod nearly 100 feet long." We have a very good case," he said. Jeanna Bryner of LiveScience swallowed the big squid story whole and had her version regurgitated at FOX and CBS News.
– Sasquatch should be really nervous right now... First, Siberian officials announced they had proof that Yeti exists. Now a Massachusetts paleontologist says he has indirect evidence that the fearsome kraken once roamed the seas. At the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, Mark McMenamin yesterday posited that the 100-foot-long mythological sea monster was soft-bodied, which would explain the absence of bones and other fossil evidence. But he believes that the bones of nine ichthyosaurs at the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada point to the kraken's existence, reports LiveScience. The markings on the bones of the 45-foot ichthyosaurs at the park, along with the larger than expected number of broken ribs and the bones' "very odd configuration," led McMenamin to believe that the ichthyosaurs had likely been killed then carried to a single lair, likely by an octopus-type creature that had either drowned them or twisted their necks. Science Daily also reports that McMenamin observed that the fossils' vertebrae seem to be arranged in a way that mimics the pattern of the sucker discs on a cephalopod tentacle. LiveScience notes that plenty of people are calling his circumstantial evidence hooey. Click to read one such reaction, a Wired piece titled "The Giant, Prehistoric Squid That Ate Common Sense."