Have you ever considered the origin of our worst nightmares?

It may have been the fossils of enormous prehistoric animals for the ancient Greeks.

On the Greek island of Crete, the tusk, several teeth, and some bones of a Deinotherium giganteum—which loosely translates to “really huge, terrible beast”—have been discovered. The enormous mammal, which stood 15 feet (4.6 meters) tall at the shoulder and had tusks that were 4.5 feet (1.3 meters) long, was a distant relative of the elephants that we know today. It was one of the biggest mammals that ever lived on Earth.

Charalampos Fassoulas, a geologist at the Natural History Museum of the University of Crete, stated, “This is the first finding in Crete and the south aegean in general.” We also found the animal’s entire tusk for the first time in Greece. The fossils have not yet been dated, but the sediment in which they were discovered is between 8 and 9 million years old.

The skulls of Deinotherium giganteum, which were found at other locations, show that it was more primitive than the modern elephant and had a much larger nasal opening in the middle of the skull.

The large opening in the middle of the skull suggests a prominent trunk to modern paleontologists. The myths about the terrifying Cyclops with only one eye may have been based on Deinotheriumskulls for the ancient Greeks.

In her book The First Fossil Hunters, she describes the natural world as follows: In her book Paleontology in the Age of the Greeks and Romans, Adrienne Mayor argues that the ancient Greeks and Romans relied on fossil evidence—the enormous bones of species that had long since vanished—to support and invent new myths.

According to Thomas Strasser, an archaeologist at California State University, Sacramento who has carried out extensive research in Crete, “the idea that mythology explains the natural world is an old idea.” You won’t ever be able to put the theory to the test in a scientific way, but the ancient Greeks were farmers, so they would almost certainly find fossil bones like these and try to figure out what they were. He stated, “It makes sense that they would reconstruct them in their minds as giants, monsters, sphinxes, and so on because they have no concept of evolution.”

Odysseus’ encounter with the cyclops is mentioned in Homer’s epic tale of Odysseus’ 10-year return journey from Troy to his homeland. He describes the Cyclops as a group of giant, man-eating shepherds with one eye in The Odyssey. They lived on an island that Odysseus and a few of his men went to look for supplies. One of the Cyclops took them captive and ate several of the men. They were all saved from becoming dinner by only their brains and bravery. The captured travelers were able to intoxicate the monster, make him blind, and then get away.

According to a second legend, the Cyclops are the offspring of Gaia, the earth, and Uranus, the sky. The three brothers went on to become the Olympian gods’ blacksmiths, crafting Poseidon’s trident and Zeus’ thunderbolts.

According to Strasser, “Mayor makes a convincing case that the places where a lot of these myths originate occur in places where there are a lot of fossil beds.” She also mentions that, in some myths, monsters emerge from the ground after large storms. This is one of the things I had never considered, but it makes sense that these bones appear after a storm because the soil has eroded.

Similar to elephants, deinotheres roamed Europe, Asia, and Africa between 23 and 5 million years ago and between 5 and 1.8 million years ago before going extinct.

According to Fassoulas, the discovery of the remains on Crete suggests that the mammal traveled throughout more of Europe than previously thought. The excavation was overseen by Fassoulas, who is in charge of the museum’s paleontology division.

He suggests that during times when sea levels were lower, the animals got to Crete from Turkey by swimming and island-hopping across the southern aegean Sea. Many herbivores, including the modern elephant, can swim extremely well.

He stated, “We believe that these animals probably came from Turkey to reach Crete via the islands of Rhodes and Karpathos.”

In contrast to elephants of today, the tusks of the Deinotherium grew from its lower jaw and curved slightly backward rather than upward. The tusks’ wear marks suggest that they were used to dig up plants and possibly remove bark from trees.

According to Fassoulas, “this animal lived in a forest environment, according to what we know from studies in northern and eastern Europe.” In such an ecosystem, it was using his ground-faced tusk to dig, settle the branches and bushes, and generally find food.