Kraken octopus from the Cretaceous Period was 62-feet-long

 Today's blog is about another prehistoric creature, but this one was an ocean dweller. Paleontologists discovered a gian octopus measuring 62 feet in length that lived during the time of the dinosaurs.

(IMAGE:  N. haggarti could have been one of the largest species in Cretaceous oceans. (Image credit: Hokkaido University))

Kraken octopus from the Cretaceous Period was 62-feet-long

A close inspection of 27 fossil jaws from finned octopuses challenge the longstanding belief that the apex oceanic predators of the Cretaceous were all vertebrates.

By Sophie Berdugo, LIVE SCIENCE, April 2026

Scientists have identified enormous finned "kraken" octopuses that may have reached up to 62 feet (19 meters) long. The behemoths prowled the oceans during the Cretaceous and could be the largest invertebrates ever discovered.

Fossil jaws revealed distinctive markings that suggest these kraken-like octopuses used their powerful jaws to crush hard-shelled prey. That, combined with their gigantic size and evidence of intelligence, put them top of the marine food chain, according to a study published Thursday (April 23) in the journal Science.

This finding suggests scientists need to rethink the oceanic pecking order during the Cretaceous period (145 million years to 66 million years ago).

"These findings revise the view of the Cretaceous ocean as a world dominated only by large vertebrate predators," study co-author Yasuhiro Iba, a paleontologist at Hokkaido University in Japan, told Live Science in an email. "They show that giant invertebrates — octopuses — also occupied the top of the food web."

Other experts say these size estimates are the upper end of a large possible range. Even so, the discovery raises questions about the oceanic landscape of the Cretaceous, such as how these species could grow so large, and whether even larger marine species existed after the Cretaceous period, they said.

For the study, the researchers reassessed 15 fossilized octopus jaws previously unearthed in Japan and Vancouver Island. They also discovered 12 new Cretaceous fossil octopus jaws in Japan using state-of-the-art digital fossil-mining technology. Combined, these revealed two species of extinct finned octopuses: Nanaimoteuthis jeletzkyi and Nanaimoteuthis haggarti.

The N. jeletzkyi fossils were unearthed in rocks dating to between 100 million and 72 million years ago, pushing back the oldest known octopuses by around 5 million years, and finned octopuses by 15 million years, the authors wrote in the study.