The carcass of a massive 49-foot sea creature washed up on the beach of a remote Indonesian island last week, leading to speculation about what kind of animal it is.
The creature was discovered Wednesday night by a local resident, Asrul Tuanakota, on the Seram Island in the Maluku province, the Jakarta Globe reported. He initially thought it was a boat that got stranded, but by morning he realized it had been a living thing.
Curious locals soon gathered to see the creature, which some thought was a giant squid. Marine experts used photos taken of the creature to identify it as some kind of whale, probably a baleen whale, according to HuffPost.
“Giant squid are invertebrates and there are clearly bones visible,” Regina Asmutis-Silvia, executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation, told HuffPost.
Besides bones, other experts also identified plates and mouth parts commonly found on whales, especially baleen whales.
"There is lots of stuff in the ocean that we don't know about — but there's nothing that big [still unknown]," whale biologist Alexander Werth told LiveScience.
Although some on Twitter wanted to believe it was a Kraken or some other kind of sea monster, others wanted to know how it got bloody — maybe in a fight with something even bigger.
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