62-foot ‘kraken-like’ octopus identified as ‘top-tier predator’ 100M years ago — with powerful, bone-crushing bite: scientists

NY Post ^ | 4/23/26 | Ben Cost

[Libloather]

It was more than it was Kraken-ed up to be.

An octopus the size of the Hollywood Sign might seem like a monster from Greek mythology.

However, new fossil evidence reveals that massive “kraken”-like cephalopods ruled the seas during the Cretaceous period, possibly preying on massive sea reptiles and other so-called apex predators, per a study published Thursday in the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

This massive mollusk “had among the largest body sizes of all organisms in the Cretaceous oceans,” wrote the researchers, who hailed from Hokkaido University.

Indeed, at 62-feet-long, this colossal octopus could grow up to six feet longer than the mighty mosasaur, a predatory marine reptile that has long been considered the oceanic alpha-dog in the late Cretaceous between 100 and 60 million years ago.

In the movie “Jurassic World,” this nautical night terror notably dispatches the evil Indominus Rex — essentially a hybrid of the fiercest dinosaurs.

In fact, not only was the octopus bigger, but it was potentially badder as it might’ve even preyed on the aforementioned leviathan.

This ran contrary to previous scholarship that large vertebrates such as the latter dominated the ocean while invertebrates were their prey.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

LOL! Cute. :)