[Earth] Body of Unknown Creature Has Biologists Baffled

Body of Unknown Creature Has Biologists Baffled

A bout of worry was followed by confusion last Thursday as the corpse of a large sea creature washed up on the beach of Cape West Coast, South Africa. The creature was mistaken for the remains of a Destroyer-class Reaper at first, but upon closer examination was made of flesh and cartilage.

The corpse resembles that of a giant squid in shape, only about twenty times as large as previously documented specimens. From the tip of its longest tentacles to its posterior fins, it measures approximately two hundred meters long. Its mantle (the squid’s “head”), by comparison, is thirty meters in length. The corpse bears a number of plasma burns and is missing some tentacles, suggesting that this creature fought a Reaper.

"We understand far more about life on other planets than we do about what lives in our own ocean," says human biologist Doctor Rachel Snow. "A giant squid this size should not be able to support its own mass, yet somehow it does. I am very eager to study this corpse."

Locals have taken to calling this creature the Kraken.

"There are numerous legends of a giant squid capsizing ships that date back to as late as Earth's nineteenth century," noted xenohistorian Dr. Maia T'Mesa. "We're talking squids so long that they dwarfed ships, with apocryphal accounts of such creatures being recorded in the wild. The legend of the kraken was long thought to be the greatest exaggerations of these, but finding this corpse seems to prove otherwise.”