🚀 Whale-Sized Octopuses: the first giant invertebrate predators of the Cretaceous seas

Paleontologists have uncovered fossilized jaws of the earliest finned octopuses (Cirrata) in Late Cretaceous deposits dating from 100 to 72 million years ago. Estimated body lengths range from 7 to 19 meters — comparable to modern whales.

🔹 Exceptionally well-preserved jaw specimens were discovered in Japan. Unlike modern octopuses, these jaws show heavy wear — evidence that the animals crushed hard-shelled prey.

🔹 The asymmetric wear pattern suggests lateralized behavior — a preference for one side of the body. In modern invertebrates, such asymmetry is often linked to advanced cognitive abilities.

🔹 These octopuses were likely apex predators of their ecosystems. Until now, it was believed that for the past ~370 million years, the top of the marine food chain was occupied exclusively by vertebrates.

This discovery challenges a long-standing assumption: that large invertebrates could not compete with giant marine reptiles of the Mesozoic. In reality, deep-sea octopuses may have been among the largest invertebrates in Earth’s history.

Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aea6285