Indeed, the word “kraken” comes from the Norwegian “ krake,” meaning “fabulous sea monsters.” The late 14th-century Icelandic saga Örvar-Oddr gives an account of the Hafgufa, “the hugest monster in ...

The open ocean has always made room for imagination. For centuries, sailors swore they saw monsters bigger than ships, smarter than people, and hungry enough to pull a crew straight off the deck. No ...

Giant mosasaurs, once thought to be strictly ocean-dwelling predators, may have spent their final chapter prowling freshwater rivers alongside dinosaurs and crocodiles. A massive tooth found in North ...

Machine generated contents note: Classical Antecedents -- The Earliest Medieval Maps with Sea Monsters: Beatus Mappaemundi -- "Let the Waters Bring Forth Abundantly": Sea Monsters in the Creation -- ...

The historian Procopius described how a creature called Porphyrios terrified sixth-century sailors for 50 years. But what was it? A sixth-century Byzantine mosaic depicts an amphibious monster—though ...

CC0 Usage Conditions ApplyClick for more information. Many of history's most fearsome legendary monsters are based on real animals. The Biodiversity Heritage Library "Monsters Are Real" campaign ...

In May 1925, a strange decaying corpse washed ashore on Moore’s Beach, now known as Natural Bridges State Beach, in Santa Cruz. Locals who swarmed out to investigate the specimen described elephantine ...

What do you do when a mysterious sea serpent is prowling warm Gulf waters? You catch it, chop it up and make it into soup. That's the lesson learned in a segment in Nashville writer Allen Sircy's new ...