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Kraken |
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The Bishop of Bergen, Erik Pontoppidan, writing in THE NATURAL HISTORY OF NORWAY (1723), Told of the largest "Sea-Monster in the world," the many-armed Kraken. The giant squid--once known as the Kraken-- was considered an absurd fiction until indisputable physical evidence of its existence becamse availible in the 1870's. Before then, however, respectable opinion thought Kraken as fabulous a creature as the Merbeings (mermaids), and those who claimed to have seen it could count on being ridiculed if they took their sightings to scientists. Scientific investigation of the animal did not begin until the 1840's,when Danish zoologist Johan Japetus Steenstrup took up the subject, looking for reports in printed sources. In an indifferently recieved 1847 lecture to the society of Scandinavian Naturalists, he took note of beach strandings of giant squids going back to 1639, when one was found on an Icelandic Beach. In 1853, after Jutland fishermen caught and cut up a giant squid, Steenstrup secured the pharynx and the beak. - entry provided by TR, ajredalert@yahoo.com
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