Making of a monster: ‘Cannibal the Animal’

Mats E Eriksson (Sweden) A hellish monstrosity of an animal – like a beastly entity taken straight out of your worst nightmare – has come to sculptural life. And it has Death Metal, primordial life and Alex Webster written all over it. Fig. 1. The monster sculpture in progress, with its ‘daddy’ model maker Esben Horn, who also functions as a scale (Esben Horn is 1.85m tall). At this stage, the worm’s body has been roughly sculptured out of Styrofoam and, alongside, the huge jaws still await several adjustments. (Photo: Mats E Eriksson.) Last year, a new gigantic fossil polychaete worm – Websteroprion armstrongi – was discovered and unveiled to the world (Eriksson et al. 2017). (I discuss this in my article: Worm monstrosity: A giant extinct worm.) The creature is an ancestor to the now-living, marine ‘Bobbit’ worms – ambush predators that hunt in stealth mode for octopuses and fish. The fossil species was discovered in 400 million years old rocks from the Devonian Period in Canada and was named in honour of mighty bass giant, Alex Webster, of Cannibal Corpse, Blotted Science and Conquering Dystopia. Now, this primordial animal has come to ‘life’ by the skilled hands of prehistoric sculpture artist extraordinaire Esben Horn, at his company 10 Tons (see Eriksson, 2014) in Copenhagen, Denmark, and assisted by me, who was lead author of the scientific study presenting the species. Since I reported on the discovery of W. armstrongi in Issue 50 of Deposits (Worm monstrosity – a … Read More