A sketch of the giant octopus.
Image: Yohei Utsuki
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Hokkaido University.
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Hokkaido University.
To a conspiracy-theorist creationist who sees science as an organised plot to trick them into changing their mind, it must seem that the whole world and its dog are ganging up on them. The “conspiracy” has now spread to a team of researchers led by Shin Ikegami of Hokkaido University, Japan, who have announced the discovery of fossilised jaws of giant octopuses that may have been apex predators in Late Cretaceous seas, about 100 million years before creationism’s mythical “Creation Week”. Some of these animals may have reached nearly 20 metres in length, making them among the largest invertebrates yet described.
To a creationist, apparently, it is more plausible to believe that a god self-assembled out of nothing, then made an entire universe out of nothing by magic just a few thousand years ago, than to accept that Earth and life on it are the result of long, slow, scientifically demonstrable natural processes. So, when the evidence says otherwise, the evidence must somehow be forged, misrepresented or misunderstood. Besides, Bronze Age people who thought the world was flat, with a solid dome over it, said so — and what better evidence could there be than that?
What the team of researchers from several Japanese research institutions, together with Jörg Mutterlose of Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, discovered was recently published in Science. Using high-resolution grinding tomography and an artificial intelligence model, they identified fossil jaws hidden inside rock samples from the Late Cretaceous period. The fossils, from Japan and Vancouver Island, date from between about 100 and 72 million years ago. They had been preserved in calm seafloor sediments, retaining fine details, including wear marks that reveal how these animals fed.
Based on the size and shape of the jaws, the researchers estimate that some of these extinct finned octopuses, especially Nanaimoteuthis haggarti, may have reached nearly 20 metres in total length. Their jaws show heavy chipping, scratching, cracking and polishing, consistent with repeated forceful biting into hard prey such as shells, bones or other resistant material. These were not passive, soft-bodied animals drifting harmlessly through the Cretaceous seas; they appear to have been powerful, active predators, competing in ecosystems otherwise assumed to have been dominated by large marine reptiles and sharks.
One especially intriguing finding was asymmetrical wear on the jaws. In two species, one side of the biting surface was more heavily worn than the other, suggesting that these animals may have favoured one side when handling difficult prey. This sort of behavioural lateralisation is associated in modern animals with complex neural processing, raising the possibility that advanced predatory behaviour, and perhaps a degree of intelligence, had already evolved in these early octopus relatives. The discovery also pushes the fossil record of finned octopuses back by about 15 million years, and the broader octopus record by about 5 million years.
What is high-resolution grinding tomography? High-resolution grinding tomography is a way of finding and digitally reconstructing fossils that are hidden inside solid rock, especially when ordinary preparation or X-ray CT scanning cannot distinguish the fossil clearly from the surrounding matrix. It is a modern version of an older serial-sectioning technique pioneered by William Sollas at Oxford in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but now using digital imaging and computer reconstruction rather than drawings or wax models.The publication in Science was accompanied by a Hokkaido University press release:
The basic idea is simple but technically demanding. A rock sample containing a fossil is embedded in resin or otherwise stabilised, then a precision grinding machine removes an extremely thin layer from the surface. The newly exposed surface is photographed or scanned. Another thin layer is then ground away, and the process is repeated many hundreds or thousands of times. The resulting stack of two-dimensional images is then aligned and processed by software to produce a three-dimensional digital model of the fossil.
This makes the method especially useful for fossils that are too delicate to remove from the rock mechanically, or where the fossil and the surrounding rock are too similar in density or composition for CT scanning to work well. In some cases, grinding tomography can reveal microscopic internal structures, fine anatomical details, and wear marks that would otherwise remain invisible.
There is, however, an obvious drawback: grinding tomography is destructive. The original physical specimen is gradually ground away during the process. What remains is the digital record — a permanent stack of images and a virtual 3D fossil that can be examined, measured, rotated, sliced, enlarged and shared with other researchers. For rare or important specimens, researchers normally document the sample carefully before grinding it.
In the Hokkaido University study of Cretaceous octopus jaws, this technique allowed researchers to detect fossilised beaks hidden inside Late Cretaceous rock samples from Japan and Vancouver Island. Combined with an artificial intelligence model, the method revealed jaws and fine wear patterns that showed these ancient octopuses were powerful predators capable of biting hard prey.
It is important to note that high-resolution grinding tomography is not a dating method. It does not tell scientists how old the fossil is. Instead, it is an imaging and reconstruction method. The age comes from the geological context of the rock layers in which the fossil is found, while grinding tomography reveals what is physically preserved inside the rock.
In other words, this is not speculation, guesswork or “interpretation” in the creationist sense; it is painstaking physical evidence, layer by layer, turned into a three-dimensional digital fossil that can be checked, measured and reanalysed.
Giant octopuses may have ruled the oceans 100 million years ago
Fossil evidence suggests that some of the earliest octopuses were enormous, powerful predators in the Cretaceous oceans
Today’s octopuses are intelligent, remarkably flexible animals that lurk in reefs, hide in crevices, or drift through the deep sea. But new research suggests that their earliest relatives may have played a far more predatory role in ocean ecosystems. A study led by researchers at Hokkaido University has found that the earliest known octopuses were giant predators that hunted at the very top of the food web, alongside large marine vertebrates. The study was published in Science on 23 April 2026.
Octopuses are soft-bodied animals and so they rarely fossilize well. This makes their evolutionary history especially difficult to trace compared with animals that leave behind bones or shells. In this study, the researchers used fossil jaws of early octopuses, a feeding organ with a high fossilization potential, to reconstruct their hidden history.
Using high-resolution grinding tomography and an artificial intelligence model, they found fossil jaws hidden inside rock samples from the Late Cretaceous period, spanning 100 to 72 million years ago. These fossils, found in Japan and Vancouver Island, had been well preserved in calm seafloor sediments, retaining fine wear marks that revealed how these animals fed.
The fossils belonged to a group of extinct finned octopuses, known as Cirrata. By analyzing the size, shape, and wear patterns of the jaws, the team concluded that these animals were active predators that likely crushed hard prey with powerful bites.
Our findings suggest that the earliest octopuses were gigantic predators that occupied the top of the marine food chain in the Cretaceous. Based on exceptionally well-preserved fossil jaws, we show that these animals reached total lengths of up to nearly 20 meters, which may have surpassed the size of large marine reptiles of the same age.
The most surprising finding perhaps was the extent of wear on the jaws. [The fossil jaws showed extensive chipping, scratching, cracking, and polishing, all signs of a strong biting force.] In well-grown specimens, up to 10% of the jaw tip relative to the total jaw length had been worn away, which is larger than that seen in modern cephalopods that feed on hard-shelled prey. This indicates repeated, forceful interactions with their prey, revealing an unexpectedly aggressive feeding strategy.
Professor Yasuhiro Iba, corresponding author
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Hokkaido University
Sapporo, Japan.
These findings suggest that these ancient octopuses were powerful and active hunters that consumed abundant prey.
The discovery changes what scientists thought about the early history of octopuses. The new fossils extend the earliest known record of finned octopuses by around 15 million years and the broader octopus record by around 5 million years, placing them as far back as about 100 million years ago.
One especially intriguing clue came from uneven wear on the jaws. In the two species examined, one side of the biting part was more worn than the other, suggesting that these animals may have preferred using one side of the jaw more heavily. This kind of behavioral asymmetry, known as lateralization, is associated in modern animals with advanced neural processing. The research suggests that even these early octopuses may already have shown complex behavior linked to intelligence.
For decades, scientists have largely viewed ancient marine ecosystems as being dominated by vertebrate predators, while invertebrates were thought to occupy lower levels of the food web. The new findings suggest that giant octopuses were an unexpected exception: invertebrates that rose to the top tier of the marine food web and competed with large vertebrates.
(Video: Shin Ikegami, Kanta Sugiura, Yasuhiro Iba, Jörg Mutterlose, Yusuke Takeda, Mehmet Oguz Derin, Aya Kubota, Kazuki Tainaka, Harufumi Nishida)
This study provides the first direct evidence that invertebrates could evolve into giant, intelligent apex predators in ecosystems that have been dominated by vertebrates for about 400 million years. Our findings show that powerful jaws and the loss of superficial skeletons, common characteristics of octopuses and marine vertebrates, were essential to becoming huge, intelligent marine predators.
Professor Yasuhiro Iba.
The research opens the door to reconstructing entire ancient ecosystems with unprecedented detail. By combining digital fossil-mining with AI, the team expects to uncover many more hidden fossils.
Publication:
So, once again, the evidence is not doing what creationists need it to do. Instead of a young Earth, a recent magical creation, and neatly separated “kinds” appearing without ancestry, we have another example of deep-time biology preserved in stone: extinct cephalopods, already highly specialised predators, swimming in Cretaceous seas tens of millions of years before humans, before modern mammals, and long before creationist mythology says the universe itself existed.
And this is not a case of scientists finding something and forcing it into an evolutionary story. The fossils were hidden inside rock, revealed layer by layer by high-resolution grinding tomography, reconstructed digitally, compared anatomically with living cephalopods, and interpreted in the light of wear patterns, jaw structure, sedimentary context and known cephalopod biology. In other words, the conclusion comes from the evidence, not from a sacred text that must be protected from contradiction at all costs.
The result is a richer, more interesting picture of life in the Late Cretaceous oceans. These were not primitive, half-formed creatures waiting for creationists to decide whether they belonged in one “kind” or another. They were highly adapted animals, apparently capable of powerful biting, possibly showing behavioural lateralisation, and occupying major predatory roles in ecosystems already shaped by millions of years of evolutionary history.
For science, this is exactly how knowledge advances: new techniques reveal new evidence, new evidence modifies the picture, and the history of life becomes clearer. For creationism, however, every such discovery is merely another awkward fact to be explained away, denied, or folded into an ever more desperate excuse about “kinds”, “Flood deposits”, or a global conspiracy by scientists who, for some mysterious reason, keep finding exactly the sort of evidence evolution predicts.
The fossil jaws of these giant Cretaceous octopuses are therefore more than just a remarkable palaeontological discovery. They are another small but solid piece of the vast, cumulative, mutually reinforcing body of evidence showing that life has a long, complex, branching history. And, as usual, no gods, magic spells, or Bronze Age origin myths were required to explain it.
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