Physical Specimens
The first record of this family comes from a specimen (Magnapinna talismani) caught off the Azores in 1907. However, due to the damaged nature of the find, very little information could be discerned and it was lumped in with the mastigoteuthids, first as Chiroteuthopsis talismani and later as Mastigoteuthis talismani. In 1956 a similar squid (Magnapinna sp. C) was caught in the South Atlantic, but little was thought of it at the time. The specimen was illustrated in Alister Hardy's The Open Sea (1956), where it was identified as Octopodoteuthopsis.
During the 1990s two more immature specimens were found in the Atlantic (Magnapinna sp. A), and three more were found in the Pacific (Magnapinna pacifica). Researchers Michael Vecchione and Richard Young were the chief investigators of the finds, and eventually linked them up to the two previous specimens, erecting the family Magnapinnidae in 1998, with Magnapinna pacifica as the type species. Of particular interest was the very large fin size, up to 90% of the mantle length, that was responsible for the animals' nickname.
A single specimen of a fifth species, Magnapinna sp. B, was collected in 2004. Magnapinna sp. A was described as Magnapinna atlantica in 2006.
Read more about this topic: Bigfin Squid
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