1971 analysis The St. Augustine carcass was largely forgotten until 1957, when Forrest Glenn Wood, a curator at the Marineland of Florida and a founding member of the
International Society of Cryptozoology, became interested in the story after finding a yellowed newspaper clipping mentioning the creature. Entitled "The Facts About Florida," it read: In 1897, portions of an octopus, said to have been more gigantic than any ever before seen, were washed up on the beach at St. Augustine. Prof. Verrill, of Yale University, who examined the remains, which alone reputedly weighed over six tons, calculated that the living creature had a girth of 25 feet and tentacles 72 feet in length! He learned that a sample of the integument was preserved in the
Smithsonian Institution, and persuaded the curators to send a portion of the sample to his colleague, Dr. Joseph F. Gennaro Jr., a cell biologist at the
University of Florida. Gennaro compared the connective tissue of the St. Augustine carcass to control specimens from known
octopus and
squid species. He published his findings in the March 1971 issue of
Natural History: Now differences between the contemporary squid and octopus samples became very clear. In the octopus, broad bands of fibers passed across the plane of the tissue and were separated by equally broad bands arranged in a perpendicular direction. In the squid there were narrower but also relatively broad bundles arranged in the plane of the section, separated by thin partitions of perpendicular fibers. It seemed I had found a means to identify the mystery sample after all. I could distinguish between octopus and squid, and between them and mammals, which display a lacy network of connective tissue fibers. After 75 years, the moment of truth was at hand. Viewing section after section of the St. Augustine samples, we decided at once, and beyond any doubt, that the sample was not whale blubber. Further, the connective tissue pattern was that of broad bands in the plane of the section with equally broad bands arranged perpendicularly, a structure similar to, if not identical with, that in my octopus sample. The evidence appears unmistakable that the St. Augustine sea monster was in fact an octopus, but the implications are fantastic. Even though the sea presents us from time to time with strange and astonishing phenomena, the idea of a gigantic octopus, with arms 75 to 100 feet in length and about 18 inches in diameter at the base—a total spread of some 200 feet—is difficult to comprehend.
1986 analysis Roy Mackal, a biochemist at the
University of Chicago and a founding member of the International Society of Cryptozoology (as was F. G. Wood), decided to test the samples himself. In an issue of
Cryptozoology in 1986, he wrote, "Gennaro carried out comparative histological examination of the tissue, and concluded that it most resembled contemporary octopus tissue. While these results were highly suggestive, further biochemical work was required for an unambiguous identification of the tissue." Mackal tested samples of the St. Augustine carcass for different
amino acids and compared the results with the known amino acid composition of the tissues of a
spotted dolphin, a
beluga, a
giant squid, and two species of octopus. : +: less than 0.1% Identification of the samples: 1M:
Stenella plagiodon (dolphin) 2M:
Octopus giganteus (monster of Florida) 3M, 4M, 5M: arm, mantle and fin of
Architeuthis dux (giant squid) 6M:
Delphinapterus leucas (beluga or white whale) : Identification of the samples: 1M:
Stenella plagiodon (dolphin) 2M:
Octopus giganteus (monster of Florida) 4M: mantle of
Architeuthis dux (giant squid) 6M:
Delphinapterus leucas (beluga or white whale) He published his findings in
Cryptozoology: On the basis of Gennaro's histological studies and the present amino acid and
Cu and
Fe analyses, I conclude that, to the extent the preserved
O. giganteus tissue is representative of the carcass washed ashore at St. Augustine, Florida, in November 1896, it was essentially a huge mass of collagenous protein. Certainly, the tissue was not blubber. I interpret these results as consistent with, and supportive of, Webb and Verrill's identification of the carcass as that of a gigantic cephalopod, probably an octopus, not referable to any known species.
1995 analysis Samples of the St. Augustine carcass were again examined in 1995. They were subjected to
electron microscopy and
biochemical analysis in what was the most thorough examination of the preserved material to date. The results of the analyses, published in the
Biological Bulletin, disputed the earlier findings of Gennaro and Mackal. These are shown in the following table: : 1 Pepsin-extracted collagen from
Octopus vulgaris body wall. 2 Pepsin-extracted collagen from
Todarodes pacificus body wall. 3 Gelatin from skin. 4 Whale skin gelatin, species not reported. 5 0.5
M acetic-acid-extracted skin collagen from
Squalus acanthus. The samples were found to be "masses of virtually pure collagen" and not to have the "biochemical characteristics of invertebrate collagen, nor the collagen fiber arrangement of octopus mantle." The results suggest the samples are "the remains of the skin of an enormous
warm-blooded vertebrate." The authors conclude that "there is no evidence to support the existence of
Octopus giganteus" and concur with Verrill (1897) and Lucas (1897) that the St. Augustine carcass was "the remains of a
whale, likely the entire skin
[blubber layer] . . . nothing more or less."
2004 analysis Tissue samples of the St. Augustine Monster were re-examined in 2004 for comparison with the more recently discovered Chilean Blob. Sections were observed with an electron microscope, underwent biochemical analyses, and DNA extraction was attempted but extraction of useful DNA from the sample failed. The results of the study confirmed the findings in the 1995 analysis (Pierce
et al. 1995) that the blobs were made of collagen, and were definitively the remains of whale carcasses. : a Data taken from Pierce
et al., 1995. ==Timeline==