Experts have recently found themselves stumped like never before after being unable to pinpoint what mysterious animal is tied to ghostly white remains that washed ashore on an island in Papua New Guinea.
Photos appear to show a body that is heavily decayed, with its head completely unrecognizable.
The lumpy, rotten mass was first discovered on September 20 by locals on the small volcanic island of Simberi. However, experts only have photographs to refer to in order to discover the “globster’s” origin. Officials were not able to take samples of the creature or record its size and weight as the locals had buried it.
Helene Marsh, an environmental scientist from James Cook University in Australia, believes the specimen is a marine animal; however she said it's “anyone’s guess” as to which animal.
“It looks like a very decomposed cetacean to me," said Sascha Hooker, an environmental scientist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. A Cetacean refers to any type of whale or dolphin, which typically turn a ghostly white color when its skin falls off.
Another expert suggested it could be a dugong, or a “sea cow,” which belongs to the species order of Sirenia, and is related to the manatee. Because its head is so wide, and due to the amount of blubber, it could most likely be a grass-munching sea cow. Officials explain it would make sense since Dugongs have inspired ancient seafaring tales of mermaids.
But the most common cetaceans in the Northern Bismarck Sea include the spinner dolphins, the pantropical spotted dolphins, short-finned pilot whales and sperm whales.
Some experts have firmly agreed that it's most definitely not a shark.
"At first, I was leaning toward a large shark, but now that I've spent a bunch of time looking at this, I am more confident it is a cetacean,” said Gregory Skomal, a marine biologist at the University of Boston. He adds that images where the animal’s skin has fallen off, its exposed vertebrae looks more like a whale’s backbone than that of a shark’s spine.
In July of this year, a creature resembling a mermaid washed ashore on an Australian beach. The remains included a dome-like skull, and splayed out ribs.