According to at least two ancient and medieval scholars, Alexander the Great encountered sea monsters during his campaigns.

McCarthy points to one drawing from 1658 that shows a giant sea monster with two orifices on its head spewing water. While seemingly the stuff of fiction, the drawing might simply be “someone ...

Some of these bodies of water are largely incomprehensible to humans and unexplored. That’s why sea monsters were created!

It would be easy to imagine the cartographer invented them on the spot,” says Chet Van Duzer, cartographic historian and author of Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps. Magnus’s map ...