Overview
- The international team, which published its findings Thursday in Science, reanalyzed 27 fossil beaks to define two finned‑octopus species, Nanaimoteuthis jeletzkyi and N. haggarti.
- Researchers used digital fossil‑mining—grinding tomography that sands rock layer by layer with imaging at each step—plus machine learning to uncover 12 jaws concealed inside stone.
- Jaw wear shows heavy use consistent with crushing hard shells and bones, and uneven wear on some beaks hints at a side preference during feeding that matches patterns in modern octopuses.
- Size estimates based on jaw‑to‑body ratios suggest total lengths of roughly 3–8 meters for N. jeletzkyi and 7–19 meters for N. haggarti, with outside experts cautioning that such scaling carries wide error.
- The fossils date to about 100–72 million years ago, extending the octopus record by about 5 million years, and scientists say confirming apex‑predator status will require direct evidence such as stomach contents, bite marks, or broader finds beyond Japan and Vancouver Island.