'Horned' creature washes up on beach: mystery solved
Yahoo! Updated August 22, 2013, 7:23 pm
It appears the mystery over a ‘horned’ sea creature that washed ashore a beach in Spain has been solved.
The four-metre long creature was discovered on the Luis Siret Beach in Villaricos in Spain, in the advanced stages of decomposition.
Holidaymakers and locals took pictures of the creature before contacting the marine protection society [PROMAR], reports thinkspain.com, a A Spanish/English website.
This combined picture handout provided by Spanish Civil Protection shows an yet unidentified fish found Villaricos village in Almeria, Spain.
Experts were initially baffled.
“A lady found one part, and we helped her retrieve the rest," Civil Protection coordinator Maria Sanchez was quoted as saying.
"We have no idea what it was. It really stank, as it was in the advanced stages of decomposition."
This 'pig beast' washed up on a Wales beach earlier this year and similarily mystified experts.
PROMAR spokesman Paco Toledano was also puzzled.
“It’s hard to know what we’re dealing with,” Mr Toldano told ideal.es.
“Perhaps we could learn something more from the bones, but to be precise, it would be necessary to perform a genetic analysis, which is very expensive and who would pay for it?”
Some suggested it may be a thresher shark or giant oarfish and now Florida State University ichthyologist Dean Grubbs, a specialist on fish biology reckons he has the answer.
"That is definitely a shark skeleton," he told NBC News.
"The elements toward the back were confusing me, but those are the lower caudal fin supports. The 'horns' are the scapulocoracoids which support the pectoral fins."
