Artykuły w czasopismach na temat „Animals, Fossil – Juvenile fiction”

Bite marks on bones can provide critical information about interactions between carnivores and animals they consumed (or attempted to) in the fossil record. Data from such interactions is somewhat sparse and is hampered by a lack of records in the scientific literature. Here, we present a rare instance of feeding traces on the frill of a juvenile ceratopsian dinosaur from the late Campanian Dinosaur Park Formation of Alberta. It is difficult to determine the likely tracemaker(s) but the strongest candidate is a small-bodied theropod such as a dromaeosaur or juvenile tyrannosaur. This marks the first documented case of carnivore consumption of a juvenile ceratopsid, but may represent scavenging as opposed to predation.

Madagascar’s subfossil record preserves a diverse community of animals including elephant birds, pygmy hippopotamus, giant lemurs, turtles, crocodiles, bats, rodents, and carnivorans. These fossil accumulations give us a window into the island’s past from 80,000 years ago to a mere few hundred years ago, recording the extinction of some groups and the persistence of others. The crocodylian subfossil record is limited to two taxa,Voay robustusandCrocodylus niloticus, found at sites distributed throughout the island.V. robustusis extinct whileC. niloticusis still found on the island today, but whether these two species overlapped temporally, or ifVoaywas driven to extinction by competing withCrocodylusremains unknown. While their size and presumed behavior was similar to each other, nearly nothing is known about the growth and development ofVoay, as the overwhelming majority of fossil specimens represent mature adult individuals. Here we describe a nearly complete juvenile crocodylian specimen from Anjohibe Cave, northwestern Madagascar. The specimen is referred toCrocodylusbased on the presence of caviconchal recesses on the medial wall of the maxillae, and toC. niloticusbased on the presence of an oval shaped internal choana, lack of rostral ornamentation and a long narrow snout. However, as there are currently no described juvenile specimens ofVoay robustus, it is important to recognize that some of the defining characteristics of that genus may have changed through ontogeny. Elements include a nearly complete skull and many postcranial elements (cervical, thoracic, sacral, and caudal vertebrae, pectoral elements, pelvic elements, forelimb and hindlimb elements, osteoderms).Crocodylus niloticuscurrently inhabits Madagascar but is locally extinct from this particular region; radiometric dating indicates an age of ∼460–310 years before present (BP). This specimen clearly represents a juvenile based on the extremely small size and open sutures/detached neural arches; total body length is estimated to be ∼1.1 m (modern adults of this species range from ∼4–6 m). This fossil represents the only juvenile subfossil crocodylian specimen reported from Madagascar.

ABSTRACT: I approach Satyajit Ray's sf stories as postcolonial interventions into Western Enlightenment discourses of scientific rationality. I trace the trajectory of these concerns as they are reflected in narratives centered around nonhuman animals, published in various Bengali juvenile magazines between 1961 and 1992. Ray's stories offer a critical site for interrogating, revising, and expanding the possibilities of a Kantian moral philosophy of cosmopolitanism for post-independence contexts of democratic governance, industrialization, and urbanization. Ray's sf enables readers to imagine a posthuman cosmopolitics (to use Isabelle Stengers's concept) as an alternative to colonial cartographies of personhood and the centrifugal impulse of postcolonial nation formation. My article addresses the significant but underexplored role played by Ray's ecological thinking and care for the nonhuman animal in his postcolonial politics. Ray's sf harnesses the possibilities of Bengali speculative fiction, including Kalpavigyan's model of a fluid science to posit a speculative vision of a future-oriented cosmopolitics where the possibility for non-reciprocal and untranslatable proximities becomes a conceptual foundation for thinking about alterity.

Numerous dinosaur bone beds have been found in the Upper Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation. Taphonomy and size-frequency profiles for the most common skeletal elements of six predominantly hadrosaurid and (or) lambeosaurid assemblages were compared. All six localities are single, highly concentrated bone horizons within silty mudstones. Most are monospecific with some degree of skeletal association, parautochthonous, and likely the result of mass mortality. Four are associated with small lacustrine or waterhole environments and may be the result of drought-related mortality. Within the Two Medicine Formation drought was apparently a common mechanism for generating fossil assemblages.Both hadrosaurids and lambeosaurids appear to have been gregarious. Lack of association between small (total length < 3 m) and larger individuals suggests either that juvenile growth rates were as rapid as large ungulates or less likely, that juveniles had a period of noninteraction with adults, perhaps dwelling in strictly juvenile groups. In Maiasaura peeblesorum, reproduction appears to have been synchronous among herd members and seasonal. Additionally, mortality was high for juveniles and dropped off rapidly as animals approached adult size.

Tooth-marked bones provide important evidence for feeding choices made by extinct carnivorous animals. In the case of the dinosaurs, most bite traces are attributed to the large and robust osteophagous tyrannosaurs, but those of other large carnivores remain underreported. Here we report on an extensive survey of the literature and some fossil collections cataloging a large number of sauropod bones (68) from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of the USA that bear bite traces that can be attributed to theropods. We find that such bites on large sauropods, although less common than in tyrannosaur-dominated faunas, are known in large numbers from the Morrison Formation, and that none of the observed traces showed evidence of healing. The presence of tooth wear in non-tyrannosaur theropods further shows that they were biting into bone, but it remains difficult to assign individual bite traces to theropod taxa in the presence of multiple credible candidate biters. The widespread occurrence of bite traces without evidence of perimortem bites or healed bite traces, and of theropod tooth wear in Morrison Formation taxa suggests preferential feeding by theropods on juvenile sauropods, and likely scavenging of large-sized sauropod carcasses.

Anthropomorphism, the imposition of human traits on nonhuman objects and animals, is an ancient tradition in the art of storytelling. Existing studies on anthropomorphism in literature have mostly focused on its being a satirical device in adult fiction but paid less attention to how anthropomorphism is constructed in literature for children. This study was executed to examine the depiction of anthropomorphism through folktales, modern fables, and digitales-in selected contemporary Nigerian prose narratives for children intending to establish the use of anthropomorphized characters to bring abstract concepts to life. Jean Piaget’s cognitive constructivism was adopted as the theoretical framework for the study. Five narratives were purposively selected because of their relevance to the study. The narratives were subjected to critical analyses. The face of anthropomorphism is revealed as a rhetorical tool through personification and metaphoric expressions. Anthropomorphism in children’s narratives serves as an attention grabber and a means of giving concrete information on learning through cognitive constructivism which is effective through a literature-based learning experience. In juvenile literature, anthropomorphism is used in building a relational attitude between the young readers and the fictional characters in the text for subtle facilitation of knowledge.

An abundant and unusual fauna is associated with deep-sea hydrothermal vents on the crest of the global mid-ocean ridge system. Precipitation of metal sulfides, silica, iron-oxyhydroxides and other minerals at these vents encrusts and replaces the remains of dead organisms to form fossils that may be preserved in the geologic record. For example, molds and casts of tubiculous polychaete and vestimentiferan worms are abundantly preserved in Recent hot spring deposits on the mid-ocean ridge crest, and similar worm molds also have been found in Tethys ophiolite sulfide mineral deposits of mid-Cretaceous age. The aragonitic and calcareous shells and tests of other vent species are also good candidates for fossilization by encrustation and replacement of their carbonate constituents with hydrothermal minerals.Recent and ongoing studies of the ecology and mineralization of vent organisms at active hot spring sites on the mid-ocean ridge in the eastern Pacific provide knowledge needed for gleaning paleoecological information from fossiliferous marine hydrothermal deposits in the geologic record. At modern vents, intact larval shells (prodissoconchs or protoconchs) are present on the surfaces of many juvenile molluscs. Preservation of these larval shells by hydrothermal mineralization may provide a powerful paleoecological tool for interpretation of the life history strategies of many sessile invertebrates associated with ancient submarine hydrothermal vents. Bacterial mats that grow on the outer surfaces of sulfide mineral structures have been preserved by silica deposition in inactive deposits on the East Pacific Rise (EPR) axis at 9°27'N. Studies of the ecology and growth history of this bacterial species at active vents are in progress.Preservation of ridge crest vent fauna within volcanic rock units can occur when lava erupts on the ridge crest near hydrothermal vent communities. Along the axis of the EPR at 9°50.6'N, vent mussels and vestimentiferan worms were found partially buried by lava flows and volcanic collapse rubble. Animals trapped beneath eruption-associated rubble may be coated or replaced by hydrothermal minerals precipitating from fluids circulating in the cooling rocks. In addition, worm-tube molds were created at the EPR 9°50.6'N site where lava quenched around living vestimentiferans (analogous to the formation of tree-molds in Hawaiian lava flows). These lava molds contained pyritized remnants of the chitinous tubes of the vestimentiferans.

Herbivorous tetrapods make their first appearance in Upper Carboniferous fossil assemblages but only become abundant and diverse in Upper Permian ones. During the Late Carboniferous-Early Permian interval, herbivory appeared independently at least five times: in diadectids, bolosaurids, captorhinids, edaphosaurids and caseids. These animals ranged from small forms with aptitudes for collection and processing of low-fiber plant tissues (as well as terrestrial invertebrates) to giants particularly apt for utilization of high-fiber tissues. Our report focuses on the latter group since the development of high-fiber herbivory has had a critical impact on evolution of terrestrial plants and animals as well as on the organization of terrestrial ecosystems.The low abundance and diversity of early, high-fiber herbivores reflect on one hand, sampling biases toward habitats suboptimal for herbivory, and on the other, the limited ecological capabilities of the animals themselves. Most of the Permo-Carboniferous assemblages derive from wet-land swamp and forest ecosystems where plant tissues would have been relatively rare and/or inaccessible and predation relatively intense. The likely herbivores appear apt for life in wet-land ecosystems; there they probably utilized localized patchs of productive shrub and herb along rivers and around lakes as refuges from disturbance (desiccation, temperature extremes and predation) as well as sources of food. Their low metabolic levels and growth rates minimized nutritional requirements but along with large size provided adequately for adult maintenance and for reproduction. High adult survivorship and production of a large number of eggs through a long adult lifespan would have offset high egg and juvenile mortality.Only a few Late Carboniferous and Early Permian assemblages sample drier woodland and shrub habitats where conditions would have been more favorable for high-fiber herbivory, but by Late Permian such assemblages occur in much greater numbers and diversity. The high-fiber herbivores in these dry-land ecosystems had ecological aptitudes comparable to wet-land forms but were relatively more abundant and diverse, reflecting both a greater abundance and extent of shrubby vegetation and a lower incidence of predation.

Objective – While storytime programs for preschool children are offered in nearly all public libraries in the United States, little is known about the books librarians use in these programs. This study employed text analysis to explore topics and genres of books recommended for public library storytime programs. Methods – In the study, the researchers randomly selected 429 children books recommended for preschool storytime programs. Two corpuses of text were extracted from the titles, abstracts, and subject terms from bibliographic data. Multiple text mining methods were employed to investigate the content of the selected books, including term frequency, bi-gram analysis, topic modeling, and sentiment analysis. Results – The findings revealed popular topics in storytime books, including animals/creatures, color, alphabet, nature, movements, families, friends, and others. The analysis of bibliographic data described various genres and formats of storytime books, such as juvenile fiction, rhymes, board books, pictorial work, poetry, folklore, and nonfiction. Sentiment analysis results reveal that storytime books included a variety of words representing various dimensions of sentiment. Conclusion – The findings suggested that books recommended for storytime programs are centered around topics of interest to children that also support school readiness. In addition to selecting fictionalized stories that will support children in developing the academic concepts and socio-emotional skills necessary for later success, librarians should also be mindful of integrating informational texts into storytime programs.

AbstractThe humerus is central for locomotion in turtles as quadrupedal animals. Osteological variation across testudine clades remains poorly documented. Here, we systematically describe the humerus anatomy for all major extant turtle clades based on 38 species representing the phylogenetic and ecological diversity of crown turtles. Three Late Triassic species of shelled stem turtles (Testudindata) are included to establish the plesiomorphic humerus morphology. Our work is based on 3D models, establishing a publicly available digital database. Previously defined terms for anatomical sides of the humerus (e.g., dorsal, ventral) are often not aligned with the respective body sides in turtles and other quadrupedal animals with sprawling gait. We propose alternative anatomical directional terms to simplify communication: radial and ulnar (the sides articulating with the radius/ulna), capitular (the side bearing the humeral head), and intertubercular (opposite to capitular surface). Turtle humeri show low morphological variation with exceptions concentrated in locomotory specialists. We propose 15 discrete characters to summarize osteological variation for future phylogenetic studies. Disparity analyses comparing non‐shelled and shelled turtles indicate that the presence of the shell constrains humerus variation. Flippered aquatic turtles are released from this constraint and significantly increase overall disparity. Ontogenetic changes of turtle humeri are related to increased ossification and pronunciation of the proximal processes, the distal articulation areas, and the closure of the ectepicondylar groove to a foramen. Some turtle species retain juvenile features into adulthood and provide evidence for paedomorphic evolution. We review major changes of turtle humerus morphology throughout the evolution of its stem group.

AbstractTracks and trackways of newborns, calves and juveniles attributed to straight-tusked elephants were found in the MIS 5 site (Upper Pleistocene) known as the Matalascañas Trampled Surface (MTS) at Huelva, SW Spain. Evidence of a snapshot of social behaviour, especially parental care, can be determined from the concentration of elephant tracks and trackways, and especially from apparently contemporaneous converging trackways, of small juvenile and larger, presumably young adult female tracks. The size frequency of the tracks enabled us to infer body mass and age distribution of the animals that crossed the MTS. Comparisons of the MTS demographic frequency with the morphology of the fore- and hind limbs of extant and fossil proboscideans shed light into the reproductive ecology of the straight-tusked elephant, Palaeloxodon antiquus. The interdune pond habitat appeared to have been an important water and food resource for matriarchal herds of straight-tusked elephants and likely functioned as a reproductive habitat, with only the rare presence of adult and older males in the MTS. The preservation of this track record in across a paleosol surface, although heavily trampled by different animals, including Neanderthals, over a short time frame, permitted an exceptional view into short-term intraspecific trophic interactions occurring in the Last Interglacial coastal habitat. Therefore, it is hypothesized that Neanderthals visited MTS for hunting or scavenging on weakened or dead elephants, and more likely calves.

Abstract Lobopodians are an iconic and diverse group of animals from the Cambrian, which alongside radiodonts, present an important window into the evolution of arthropods and the development of Paleozoic ecosystems. Of these, a rare few species outside of Radiodonta possess lateral swimming flaps. The recent discovery of Utahnax provided much-needed insight into the evolution of swimming flaps, suggesting that the ventrolateral flaps of Kerygmachela evolved independently from other flap-bearing lobopodians and radiodonts. Here a new pelagic lobopodian species is described, Mobulavermis adustus new genus new species, the first lobopodian to be reported from the Cambrian-age Pioche Shale of Nevada. Mobulavermis adustus was large and possessed more ventrolateral flap pairs than any other known lobopodian or radiodont. It is found to be a close relative of both Kerygmachela and Utahnax, allowing the establishment of the new lobopodian family Kerygmachelidae new family. In addition, an indeterminate euarthropod fossil from the Pioche Formation is described in brief, and the recently described Chengjiang species Parvibellus avatus Liu et al., 2022, thought to have been related to the “gilled lobopodians,” is reinterpreted as a juvenile siberiid lobopodian. UUID: http://zoobank.org/759c4eb9-ec60-4d5a-8b20-4f115ab79575

The conservation status of large-bodied mammals is dire. Their decline has serious consequences because they have unique ecological roles not replicated by smaller-bodied animals. Here, we use the fossil record of the megafauna extinction at the terminal Pleistocene to explore the consequences of past biodiversity loss. We characterize the isotopic and body-size niche of a mammal community in Texas before and after the event to assess the influence on the ecology and ecological interactions of surviving species (>1 kg). Preextinction, a variety of C 4 grazers, C 3 browsers, and mixed feeders existed, similar to modern African savannas, with likely specialization among the two sabertooth species for juvenile grazers. Postextinction, body size and isotopic niche space were lost, and the δ 13 C and δ 15 N values of some survivors shifted. We see mesocarnivore release within the Felidae: the jaguar, now an apex carnivore, moved into the specialized isotopic niche previously occupied by extinct cats. Puma, previously absent, became common and lynx shifted toward consuming more C 4 -based resources. Lagomorphs were the only herbivores to shift toward C 4 resources. Body size changes from the Pleistocene to Holocene were species-specific, with some animals (deer, hare) becoming significantly larger and others smaller (bison, rabbits) or exhibiting no change to climate shifts or biodiversity loss. Overall, the Holocene body-size-isotopic niche was drastically reduced and considerable ecological complexity lost. We conclude biodiversity loss led to reorganization of survivors and many “missing pieces” within our community; without intervention, the loss of Earth’s remaining ecosystems that support megafauna will likely suffer the same fate.

McAllister, Ian, and Nicholas Read. The Sea Wolves: Living Wild in the Great Bear Rainforest. Vancouver: Orca, 2010. Print At first glance, The Sea Wolves is a small coffee table book. It is not, however, just a pretty photographic exploration of the wolves that inhabit The Great Bear Rainforest. It is a very long opinion piece written expressly to convince readers that wolves are not “the big bad wolf” of stories; rather, we should all love and respect them. Authors Ian McAllister, a founding director of both the Raincoast Conservation Society and Pacific Wild, and Nicholas Read, a journalist, pull no punches in their attempt to sway the reader. While the book does present facts about the wolves and their environment, many of them likely accurate, the authors make sweeping statements and claims which they require the reader to accept at face value. For example, though the authors state that there is “a great deal of evidence to suggest that over-fishing, fish farms and climate change have all played a role in [the wolves’] decline,” this statement does not direct the reader to any evidence. Part of the purpose of the book is to educate the reader about the wolves; however, it is also clearly designed to manipulate the readers’ emotions. The authors attempt to get the reader to identify with the wolves through anthropomorphizing the animals and by drawing extensive parallels between the lives of wolves and the lives of people. For example, they state that the reason that wolves save the “tastiest deer” for their young pups “could be because, just as in human families, wolf families like to spoil their babies.” Furthermore, throughout the book, the authors choose emotionally-laden words and images, stating, for example, that wolves “have been persecuted by humans, with a kind of madness,” or that they “romp on the beach in the ocean foam that burbles off the waves like bubble bath.” Each interpretation of the wolves’ behaviour seems designed to achieve the desired effect of garnering sympathy for the creatures. While there is nothing wrong with writing a polemic against the dangers to wolves and their environment, this book is presented by the publisher as juvenile non-fiction for ages 8 and up. Children in upper elementary or even junior high school grades may have difficulty distinguishing between facts and strongly-worded opinions presented in a book labelled as non-fiction. Recommended: Three stars out of fourReviewer: Sandy CampbellSandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines. Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.

In 1999, the TV movie Shark Attack depicted an attack by mutant great white sharks on the population of Cape Town. By the time the third entry in the series, Shark Attack 3, aired in 2002, mutant great whites had lost their lustre and were replaced as antagonists with the megalodon: a giant shark originating not in any laboratory, but history, having lived from approximately 23 to 3.6 million years ago. The megalodon was resurrected again in May 2021 through a trifecta of events. A video of a basking shark encounter in the Atlantic went viral on the social media platform TikTok, due to users misidentifying it as a megalodon caught on tape. At the same time a boy received publicity for finding a megalodon tooth on a beach in South Carolina on his fifth birthday (Scott). And finally, the video game Stranded Deep, in which a megalodon is featured as a major enemy, was released as one of the monthly free games on the PlayStation Plus gaming service. These examples form part of a larger trend of alleged megalodon sightings in recent years, emerging as a component of the modern resurgence of cryptozoology. In the words of Bernard Heuvelmans, the Belgian zoologist who both popularised the term and was a leading figure of the field, cryptozoology is the “science of hidden animals”, which he further explained were more generally referred to as ‘unknowns’, even though they are typically known to local populations—at least sufficiently so that we often indirectly know of their existence, and certain aspects of their appearance and behaviour. It would be better to call them animals ‘undescribed by science,’ at least according to prescribed zoological rules. (1-2) In other words, a large aspect of cryptozoology as a field is taking the legendary creatures of non-Western mythology and finding materialist explanations for them compatible with Western biology. In many ways, this is a relic of the era of European imperialism, when many creatures of Africa and the Americas were “hidden animals” to European eyes (Dendle 200-01; Flores 557; Guimont). A major example of this is Bigfoot beliefs, a large subset of which took Native American legends about hairy wild men and attempted to prove that they were actually sightings of relict Gigantopithecus. These “hidden animals”—Bigfoot, Nessie, the chupacabra, the glawackus—are referred to as ‘cryptids’ by cryptozoologists (Regal 22, 81-104). Almost unique in cryptozoology, the megalodon is a cryptid based entirely on Western scientific development, and even the notion that it survives comes from standard scientific analysis (albeit analysis which was later superseded). Much like living mammoths and Bigfoot, what might be called the ‘megalodon as cryptid hypothesis’ serves to reinforce a fairy tale of its own. It reflects the desire to believe that there are still areas of the Earth untouched enough by human destruction to sustain massive animal life (Dendle 199-200). Indeed, megalodon’s continued existence would help absolve humanity for the oceanic aspect of the Sixth Extinction, by its role as an alternative apex predator; cryptozoologist Michael Goss even proposed that whales and giant squids are rare not from human causes, but precisely because megalodons are feeding on them (40). Horror scholar Michael Fuchs has pointed out that shark media, particularly the 1975 film Jaws and its 2006 video game adaptation Jaws Unleashed, are imbued with eco-politics (Fuchs 172-83). These connections, as well as the modern megalodon’s surge in popularity, make it notable that none of Syfy’s climate change-focused Sharknado films featured a megalodon. Despite the lack of a Megalodonado, the popular appeal of the megalodon serves as an important case study. Given its scientific origin and dynamic relationship with popular culture, I argue that the ‘megalodon as cryptid hypothesis’ illustrates how the boundaries between ‘hard’ science and mythology, fiction and reality, as well as ‘monster’ and ‘animal’, are not as firm as advocates of the Western science tradition might believe. As this essay highlights, science can be a mythology of its own, and monsters can serve as its gods of the gaps—or, in the case of megalodon, the god of the depths. Megalodon Fossils: A Short History Ancient peoples of various cultures likely viewed fossilised teeth of megalodons in the area of modern-day Syria (Mayor, First Fossil Hunters 257). Over the past 2500 years, Native American cultures in North America used megalodon teeth both as curios and cutting tools, due to their large size and serrated edges. A substantial trade in megalodon teeth fossils existed between the cultures inhabiting the areas of the Chesapeake Bay and Ohio River Valley (Lowery et al. 93-108). A 1961 study found megalodon teeth present as offerings in pre-Columbian temples across Central America, including in the Mayan city of Palenque in Mexico and Sitio Conte in Panama (de Borhegyi 273-96). But these cases led to no mythologies incorporating megalodons, in contrast to examples such as the Unktehi, a Sioux water monster of myth likely inspired by a combination of mammoth and mosasaur fossils (Mayor, First Americans 221-38). In early modern Europe, megalodon teeth were initially referred to as ‘tongue stones’, due to their similarity in size and shape to human tongues—just one of many ways modern cryptozoology comes from European religious and mystical thought (Dendle 190-216). In 1605, English scholar Richard Verstegan published his book A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities, which included an engraving of a tongue stone, making megalodon teeth potentially the subject of the first known illustration of any fossil (Davidson 333). In Malta, from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, megalodon teeth, known as ‘St. Paul’s tongue’, were used as charms to ward off the evil eye, dipped into drinks suspected of being poisoned, and even ground into powder and consumed as medicine (Zammit-Maempel, “Evil Eye” plate III; Zammit-Maempel, “Handbills” 220; Freller 31-32). While megalodon teeth were valued in and of themselves, they were not incorporated into myths, or led to a belief in megalodons still being extant. Indeed, save for their size, megalodon teeth were hard to distinguish from those of living sharks, like great whites. Instead, both the identification of megalodons as a species, and the idea that they might still be alive, were notions which originated from extrapolations of the results of nineteenth and twentieth century European scientific studies. In particular, the major culprit was the famous British 1872-76 HMS Challenger expedition, which led to the establishment of oceanography as a branch of science. In 1873, Challenger recovered fossilised megalodon teeth from the South Pacific, the first recovered in the open ocean (Shuker 48; Goss 35; Roesch). In 1959, the zoologist Wladimir Tschernezky of Queen Mary College analysed the teeth recovered by the Challenger and argued (erroneously, as later seen) that the accumulation of manganese dioxide on its surface indicated that one had to have been deposited within the last 11,000 years, while another was given an age of 24,000 years (1331-32). However, these views have more recently been debunked, with megalodon extinction occurring over two million years ago at the absolute latest (Pimiento and Clements 1-5; Coleman and Huyghe 138; Roesch). Tschernezky’s 1959 claim that megalodons still existed as of 9000 BCE was followed by the 1963 book Sharks and Rays of Australian Seas, a posthumous publication by ichthyologist David George Stead. Stead recounted a story told to him in 1918 by fishermen in Port Stephens, New South Wales, of an encounter with a fully white shark in the 115-300 foot range, which Stead argued was a living megalodon. That this account came from Stead was notable as he held a PhD in biology, had founded the Wildlife Preservation Society of Australia, and had debunked an earlier supposed sea monster sighting in Sydney Harbor in 1907 (45-46). The Stead account formed the backbone of cryptozoological claims for the continued existence of the megalodon, and after the book’s publication, multiple reports of giant shark sightings in the Pacific from the 1920s and 1930s were retroactively associated with relict megalodons (Shuker 43, 49; Coleman and Huyghe 139-40; Goss 40-41; Roesch). A Monster of Science and Culture As I have outlined above, the ‘megalodon as cryptid hypothesis’ had as its origin story not in Native American or African myth, but Western science: the Challenger Expedition, a London zoologist, and an Australian ichthyologist. Nor was the idea of a living megalodon necessarily outlandish; in the decades after the Challenger Expedition, a number of supposedly extinct fish species had been discovered to be anything but. In the late 1800s, the goblin shark and frilled shark, both considered ‘living fossils’, had been found in the Pacific (Goss 34-35). In 1938, the coelacanth, also believed by Western naturalists to have been extinct for millions of years, was rediscovered (at least by Europeans) in South Africa, samples having occasionally been caught by local fishermen for centuries. The coelacanth in particular helped give scientific legitimacy to the idea, prevalent for decades by that point, that living dinosaurs—associated with a legendary creature called the mokele-mbembe—might still exist in the heart of Central Africa (Guimont). In 1976, a US Navy ship off Hawaii recovered a megamouth shark, a deep-water species completely unknown prior. All of these oceanic discoveries gave credence to the idea that the megalodon might also still survive (Coleman and Clark 66-68, 156-57; Shuker 41; Goss 35; Roesch). Indeed, Goss has noted that prior to 1938, respectable ichthyologists were more likely to believe in the continued existence of the megalodon than the coelacanth (39-40). Of course, the major reason why speculation over megalodon survival had such public resonance was completely unscientific: the already-entrenched fascination with the fact that it had been a locomotive-sized killer. This had most clearly been driven home by a 1909 display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. There, Bashford Dean, an ichthyologist at the museum, reconstructed an immense megalodon jaw, complete with actual fossil teeth. However, due to the fact that Dean assumed that all megalodon teeth were approximately the same size as the largest examples medially in the jaws, Dean’s jaw was at least one third larger than the likely upper limit of megalodon size. Nevertheless, the public perception of the megalodon remained at the 80-foot length that Dean extrapolated, rather than the more realistic 55-foot length that was the likely approximate upper size (Randall 170; Shuker 47; Goss 36-39). In particular, this inaccurate size estimate became entrenched in public thought due to a famous photograph of Dean and other museum officials posing inside his reconstructed jaw—a photograph which appeared in perhaps the most famous piece of shark fiction of all time, Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws. As it would turn out, the megalodon connection was itself a relic from the movie’s evolutionary ancestor, Peter Benchley’s novel, Jaws, from the year before. In the novel, the Woods Hole ichthyologist Matt Hooper (played by Richard Dreyfuss in the film) proposes that megalodons not only still exist, but they are the same species as great white sharks, with the smaller size of traditional great whites being due to the fact that they are simply on the small end of the megalodon size range (257-59). Benchley was reflecting on what was then the contemporary idea that megalodons likely resembled scaled-up great white sharks; something which is no longer as accepted. This was particularly notable as a number of claimed sightings stated that the alleged megalodons were larger great whites (Shuker 48-49), perhaps circuitously due to the Jaws influence. However, Goss was apparently unaware of Benchley’s linkage when he noted in 1987 (incidentally the year of the fourth and final Jaws movie) that to a megalodon, “the great white shark of Jaws would have been a stripling and perhaps a between-meals snack” (36). The publication of the Jaws novel led to an increased interest in the megalodon amongst cryptozoologists (Coleman and Clark 154; Mullis, “Cryptofiction” 246). But even so, it attracted rather less attention than other cryptids. From 1982-98, Heuvelmans served as president of the International Society of Cryptozoology, whose official journal was simply titled Cryptozoology. The notion of megalodon survival was addressed only once in its pages, and that as a brief mention in a letter to the editor (Raynal 112). This was in stark contrast to the oft-discussed potential for dinosaurs, mammoths, and Neanderthals to remain alive in the present day. In 1991, prominent British cryptozoologist Karl Shuker published an article endorsing the idea of extant megalodons (46-49). But this was followed by a 1998 article by Ben S. Roesch in The Cryptozoology Review severely criticising the methodology of Shuker and others who believed in the megalodon’s existence (Roesch). Writing in 1999, Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark, arguably the most prominent post-Heuvelmans cryptozoologists, were agnostic on the megalodon’s survival (155). The British palaeozoologist Darren Naish, a critic of cryptozoology, has pointed out that even if Shuker and others are correct and the megalodon continues to live in deep sea crevasses, it would be distinct enough from the historical surface-dwelling megalodon to be a separate species, to which he gave the hypothetical classification Carcharocles modernicus (Naish). And even the public fascination with the megalodon has its limits: at a 24 June 2004 auction in New York City, a set of megalodon jaws went on sale for $400,000, but were left unpurchased (Couzin 174). New Mythologies The ‘megalodon as cryptid hypothesis’ is effectively a fairy tale born of the blending of science, mythology, and most importantly, fiction. Beyond Jaws or Shark Attack 3—and potentially having inspired the latter (Weinberg)—perhaps the key patient zero of megalodon fiction is Steve Alten’s 1997 novel Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror, which went through a tortuous development adaptation process to become the 2018 film The Meg (Mullis, “Journey” 291-95). In the novel, the USS Nautilus, the US Navy’s first nuclear submarine and now a museum ship in Connecticut, is relaunched in order to hunt down the megalodon, only to be chomped in half by the shark. This is a clear allusion to Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1870), where his Nautilus (namesake of the real submarine) is less successfully attacked by a giant cuttlefish (Alten, Meg 198; Verne 309-17). Meanwhile, in Alten’s 1999 sequel The Trench, an industrialist’s attempts to study the megalodon are revealed as an excuse to mine helium-3 from the seafloor to build fusion reactors, a plot financed by none other than a pre-9/11 Osama bin Laden in order to allow the Saudis to take over the global economy, in the process linking the megalodon with a monster of an entirely different type (Alten, Trench 261-62). In most adaptations of Verne’s novel, the cuttlefish that attacks the Nautilus is replaced by a giant squid, traditionally seen as the basis for the kraken of Norse myth (Thone 191). The kraken/giant squid dichotomy is present in the video game Stranded Deep. In it, the player’s unnamed avatar is a businessman whose plane crashes into a tropical sea, and must survive by scavenging resources, crafting shelters, and fighting predators across various islands. Which sea in particular does the player crash into? It is hard to say, as the only indication of specific location comes from the three ‘boss’ creatures the player must fight. One of them is Abaia, a creature from Melanesian mythology; another is Lusca, a creature from Caribbean mythology; the third is a megalodon. Lusca and Abaia, despite being creatures of mythology, are depicted as a giant squid and a giant moray eel, respectively. But the megalodon is portrayed as itself. Stranded Deep serves as a perfect distillation of the megalodon mythos: the shark is its own mythological basis, and its own cryptid equivalent. References Alten, Steven. Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror. New York: Doubleday, 1997. Alten, Steven. The Trench. New York: Pinnacle Books, 1999. Atherton, Darren. 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