Experts have been left baffled and confused after eyewitnesses described seeing a creepy-looking 'mermaid' wash up on the shore of a beach in Papua New Guinea.
Locals pulled the bizarre-looking creature up onto the beach and buried it, but not before taking a series of photographs and sharing them on Facebook - and let's just say this creature looks nothing like Ariel.
The decaying creature definitely does bear some resemblance to a mermaid, thanks to its tail, which goes off into two separate tails at the end - but by definition it would be considered a globster.
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A 'globster' is a blanket term for any masses of marine flesh that wind up on beaches in various different states, often heavily decayed.
Environmental scientist Helene Marsh says she believes the globster is made up of some kind of dead animal rather than a person - or even part of a person.
She told Live Science: "After that, it is anyone's guess."
Meanwhile, marine mammal specialist Sascha Hooker said she believed the creature 'looks like a very decomposed cetacean', which refers to large mammals like dolphins or whales, given that these are known to turn while they die.
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However, Erich Hoyt, a researcher at Whale and Dolphin Conservation in the UK, says that while the creature has clearly 'been dead for weeks', he wouldn't rule out the theory it could be a sea cow or even a dugong.
Chief scientist of Hawaii’s Pacific Whale Foundation, Jens Currie, added: "The amount of blubber also indicates a marine mammal and not a shark."
These thoughts were echoed by marine biologist Gregory Skomal, who ruled out the idea of it being a shark after spotting what 'looks like a trachea'.
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He said: "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 due shape of the tail and location of the flippers."
Sadly, it'll be impossible to find out for certain what the mermaid-like creature is, as locals buried it long before anyone was able to take a DNA sample, but that hasn't stopped people on Facebook from taking their own guesses.
One person commented: "It's simple. When someone dies, you don't just throw the body, you wrap it and put it to rest. That's what it is right there. The body is actually inside covered with that white substance. It's actually a mermaid."
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Meanwhile, another disagreed: "It's shaped like a mermaid because mermaids are shaped like fish!"
Topics: World News, Nature, Science
Emma Rosemurgey