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File:Preserved giant squid beak Architeuthis monachus 1850s by Japetus Steenstrup 1.jpg

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English: This dried beak is from the carcass of a giant squid, which washed up on a Danish beach in the 1850s. Only the beak was preserved by the local villagers, and after a couple of years it found its way to noted naturalist and zoologist Japetus Streenstrup in Copenhagen. It is the first known preserved specimen of a giant squid. Steenstrup was very active in the study of squid, and had previously theorised that sightings of the so-called "Sea Monk" were in fact misunderstood encounters with a very large species of squid. When he received this large beak, being familiar with the anatomical proportions of squid, he considered it proof of his theory, and thus the specimen label reads "Architeuthis monachus", roughly translating to "the great squid monk". A few years later, when Steenstrup added the first soft tissue specimen of a giant squid to the collection at the Zoological Museum, he published the first scientific species description of the giant squid and named it Architeuthis dux (roughly translates to "the great squid leader") in 1857. Both this beak and the holotype of Architeuthis dux, now considered the only extant extant species of Architeuthis, are housed in the collections of the Zoological Museum in Copenhagen, part of the Natural History Museum of Denmark.
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Author Inger E Winkelmann

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10 April 2015

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current13:55, 13 April 2021Thumbnail for version as of 13:55, 13 April 20215,312 × 2,988 (3.23 MB)IWinkelmannUploaded own work with UploadWizard

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