[Lawtan]

No cartoon suction-teeth tearing apart flesh to the sound of epic horror music? :(

The problems of early natural sciences & history:
No system checking/consistency beyond complaints from old folk. Cockatrice, unicorn, etc. were all in science...but could be anything from rhinos to otters. Same with history a bit - biographies of god-kings fighting demons. Add propaganda, bias, romanticism/hyperbole, and that most preserved documents are inexact copies...and History is a puzzle.

In short, we can't say for sure what any mythological piece is supposed to be for certain, but Earth is weird enough for most stories to have some grain of truth. Fiction is not necessarily "lies"