I was just reading about megafauna of the past and I must say this aspect of their interactions with the environment never occurred to me.
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They could have smacked their noggins hard on that bridge, given that they stood 12+ feet tall…
I’ve not seen anyone challenge it - the tunnels have no geological explanation, and are covered with giant claw marks.
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SECRET TUNNEL!!! SECRET TUNNEL!!!
Through the mountain! Secret, secret, secret, secret tunnel !
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It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter.
— H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
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Yeah, I was a bit skeptical myself at first but I’ve also not seen anyone put out a more plausible explanation. Multiple geologists have said that they clearly weren’t formed by natural geological processes, and there’s not much evidence that humans did it. One of the main academic articles on these was published in 2016 so there’s certainly been time for other experts to dispute it. From what I’ve been able to find this explanation isn’t especially controversial among paleontologists or geologists.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10420940.2016.1223654
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Since it was only in the last decade or so that these tunnels were “discovered” by scientists (having been known by locals for a while), it makes sense there’s limited scholarship about them - especially if everyone found the initial work convincing.
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This really is the quintessential Lovecraft. Cosmic terror is immanent in everything, even being free of litter.
We know better now, of course; there is only one omphalos of cosmic terror in this world, and that is Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney. It is the melody that mad Azathoth hums on his throne in dead Carcosa, warping the very planes of existence with its foul sweetness.
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You say potato, I say aubergine.
They don’t even finish the summoning though.
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