98 million years ago a huge predator is out hunting. Nothing on the North American continent can compete with it or escape its hungry jaws. It was a true king in every sense of the word and until 2008 we had no idea it even existed. That is until Dr. Lindsay Zanno, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and Peter Makovicky of Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History made a remarkable discovery at Utah’s Cedar Mountain Formation. While discovered in 2008 the creature was not given a name until 2013.
That name was Siats meekerorum. Measuring almost 40 feet long and weighing more than 4 tons it is the second biggest carnivorous dinosaur to have been found in North America, just behind the famous Tyrannosaurus Rex. Siats (pronounced See-atus) fills the ecological gap created by the extinction of predators like Allosaurus and pre-dates the evolving of Tyrannosaurus. As awesome as this is for anyone who loves dinosaurs (frankly who doesn’t), you might be asking yourself what does this have to do with a blog on Cryptozoology? Well the answer all lies in the creature’s name.
Siats is the name of a cannibalistic giant from the mythology and legends of the Ute people of Colorado and Utah. The name means “man-eating monster”. These were huge trickster giants that looked very similar to humans, but differed in their feral like appearance and the fact they would kidnap children and devour them. The females of the race where called Bapets.
Native people all across America differ in many respects from each other in their culture and their customs. However, one thing that is almost universal is the belief in giant humans (or human-like) beings that where sometimes tricksters, cannibals, friendly forest spirits or sometimes just other “people” who wanted nothing more than to live without conflict from their Indian neighbors
And to this day Utah and Colorado still have reported encounters with giant human looking creatures we now collectively call Bigfoot. A recent sighting from late 2013 in the Grove Creek Cannon, Utah, shows that occasionally people still claim to see giants in the very same places where both the mythical Siats and the real Siats once roamed.
So one Siats found, another still out there somewhere. Maybe the next time science websites are talking about giant cannibals from Native American Myths they will be talking about it in connection to a discovery of a new form of primate found in North America. Until then I think we will all be content with marveling at this awe inspiring super predator.
*For more about Siats the dinosaur check this site out*
http://www.natureworldnews.
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