#enchoteuthis

Welcome to DinApril 2026, where instead of recycling my list from last year, I made my father come up with the dinosaurs! Our twenty-third day features a dinosaur that looks like an animal that is not a dinosaur: Phoebastria albatrus! A female short-tailed albatross has caught a Japanese flying squid and is bringing it home to her baby, only to be caught by surprise by the sight of a male Pteranodon longiceps carrying an Enchoteuthis that probably weighs a lot more than he does (and that isn't even the type species). How the pterosaur managed to pick up the stem-octopod, much less fly off with it, will be a riddle for the ages.

My father is one of those people who keeps thinking that Pteranodon is a dinosaur, so comparing it to a bird with a similar ecology made sense for me.

The stem-octopod Enchoteuthis finishing its meal, a scaphitid ammonite. Some ammonite shells found with rear bite marks have been proposed to be victims of other cephalopod predators.

Enchoteuthis (often known by its synonym Tusoteuthis) has undergone a range of interpretations. I used Tyler Greenfield's reconstruction of the animal for reference. Under this model Enchoteuthis is an active pursuit predator similar to the Humboldt squid.