The Scary-Looking 'Sea Monster' That Washed Ashore in New Zealand Finally Identified

(YouTube)

The ghastly-looking carcass that recently washed ashore in New Zealand had people speculating that it was some sort of "sea monster" or prehistoric beast. However, as it turns out, it's just a killer whale -- sorry to disappoint you.

Because of its state of significant decay, the whale resembled something scarier than a common sea mammal. Its head was massive and its teeth were large and sharp, but the rest of the creature was unrecognizable.

Video of the "strange marine creature" discovery on Pukehina Beach in the Bay of Plenty was uploaded to YouTube.

But now a marine mammal expert has identified the creature as nothing more than a killer whale, or orca.

Anton van Helden told New Zealand's Sun Live newspaper that he was able to identify the animal based on its fin structure.

The Yahoo! News blog "GrindTV" has more:

Discovery News reported on the find under the headline: “‘Monster’ Carcass Washes Ashore in New Zealand,” and explained that creatures washing ashore in severe states of decomposition have been misidentified as sea monsters or dinosaurs for generations.

Some of these massive, unidentifiable blobs have been dubbed “blobsters.”

Discovery cites an 1896 incident in which a massive 6-foot-high “fleshy corpse” came ashore at St. Augustine, Florida. After lots of speculation a naturalist decided it belonged to some type of giant octopus, previously unknown to science.

In 2003, a 40-foot, 13-ton creature washed ashore on a beach in Chile. It was labeled by BBC News as the “Chilean Blob” and the remains were presumed by one expert to be those of a giant octopus or squid, and by another as whale blubber.

(H/T: Yahoo! News)