A Facebook user found the remains of a “mermaid-shape” creature with “humanoid” skull on an Australian beach. Pic credit: Bobby-lee Oates/Facebook
The skeletal remains of a mysterious creature that washed ashore on a beach in Australia became the subject of speculation after a Facebook user shared a photo on social media last week.
Photos of the carcass first appeared on the Marine Biology Facebook group on July 5 with a request for help identifying it.
“We came across this on Longbeach keppel sands,” Facebook user Bobbi-lee Oates wrote.
Keppel Sands is a small coastal community in the Livingston Shire area of Queensland, Australia. It is on a stretch of coastline in Central Queensland known as the Capricorn Coast.
Alleged creature had “human-shaped” skull, looked like a mermaid
Oates said they were driving on the beach looking for a campsite when they saw the strange-looking skeletal remains.
She said that a part of the skeleton resembled a skull with a humanoid shape.
“We couldn’t help but notice how much the skull looked to be in the shape of a human’s,” she wrote.
She said the humanoid shape of the skull drew their attention and made them stop.
They went closer to examine it, wondering what sort of marine creature had a humanoid skull and a mermaid-like body.
They snapped multiple photos showing the entire length of the creature, estimated at 6 feet.
It appeared to have a rounded skull above rib-like structures and a single length of elongated bone at the lower end.
A “miracle new species”?
The prominent features of the creature that the Facebook user thought she recognized included a humanoid skull with an “elongated jawline.” It also had structures that looked like hair.
Oates described the hair as having the color of a cow or a kangaroo and noted that some hair was likely missing due to decomposition.
According to the Facebook user, what appeared to be a lower limb gave the creature a “mermaid shape.”
She wondered whether she had discovered a “miracle new species.”
Reactions on Facebook
Puzzled by the strange find, Oates turned to members of the Marine Biology group for help.
“Wondering if anyone has any idea what it is or who I could possibly get to find out exactly what it is,” she wrote.
Her ascription of humanoid and mermaid features to the alleged mysterious marine creature provoked responses.
One user said the remains did not look like a marine animal.
“It doesn’t look like a marine animal,” the user commented. “It’s got a leg. It’s also very hairy.”
Oates answered that at first, she also thought it looked like a calf, but later changed her mind.
“I have a friend who’s been on a cattle farm moat her life and she said its definitely not a potty calf,” she responded.
Others agreed that it looked mammalian and could be the remains of a cetacean, such as a dolphin or whale.
An outlier suggested, bizarrely, that it was human.
Others jokingly agreed that it looked like the mythical siren or a mermaid.
“That’s a mermaid,” one person exclaimed.
“Or a siren,” a second person added.
Another suggested it might be a creature from the mythical Atlantis.
On a serious note, Oates said the rounded skull resembled a dugong or dolphin. But she later commented that it was too round to be a dugong.
Her comments sparked a protracted but inconclusive debate over whether it was a dugong, a seal, a kangaroo, or a cetacean.
Expert opinion
The New York Post reported that an expert with the Zoological Society of London who examined the photo thought it looked like a small cetacean.
But the zoologist could say for sure because they weren’t familiar with the species native to the region.
It is not the first time a mysterious carcass that washed ashore on a beach provoked an intense debate on social media.
Paranormal Papers reported that the carcass of an unidentified creature that washed ashore on Ditch Plains Beach near the village of Montauk, Long Island, sparked a furious online and media debate.
The internet never reached a consensus on the identity of the carcass, dubbed the Montauk Monster. However, some experts suggested it was the badly decomposed remains of a raccoon.
The Canvey Island Monster was also the carcass of an unidentified animal discovered on a beach in Canvey Island, Essex County, England, in the 1950s.