On October 14th, 2011, the Triassic Kraken surfaced on NPR’s Science Friday. Show host Ira Flatow had invited Mark McMenamin – the Mount Holyoke College paleontologist who claimed the existence of an ancient, ichthyosaur-crunching, self-portrait-creating cephalopod – on the show. I didn’t tune in. That day I was driving down to Flagstaff, Arizona for the annual Science Writers conference and I always prefer music to talk radio on long drives. And, frankly, I was sick about hearing myself talk about the Kraken. A combination of bad science, unfortunate promotion by the Geological Society of America, and credulous reporting had created a many-tentacled myth of which there was not a shred of actual evidence. There wasn’t any more to