Oarfish? Body of Mysterious Creature Washes Up in Spain

A mysterious horned monster, which may be an oarfish or a shark, washed up on Spanish shores and it has experts a bit confused.

Several pictures of a creepy-looking creature have surfaced on the Internet which show the carcass which washed up on Luis Siret Beach in the Andalusian village of Villaricos. Some have joked that it may be the Loch Ness monster or a mutant fish, but others believe it could be an oarfish or the remains of a thresher shark, NBC reports.

"A lady found one part, and we helped her retrieve the rest," Civil Protection coordinator Maria Sanchez told Spanish publication Ideal. "We have no idea what it was. It really stank, as it was in the advanced stages of decomposition."

According to Sanchez, conservationists with the Program in Defense of Marine Animals, also known as Promar, were working to identify the remains. However they may have to identify the creature just by the photos as the remains were buried since it smelled so bad.

Francisco Toledano, the coordinator of Promar, said the 13-foot-long animal came from some "species of fish" but would not give more details. Other experts said it was actually the remains of a thresher shark, which has a caudal fin that can stretch as long as its body.

"It's hard to tell," David Shiffman, a University of Miami shark researcher who blogs about marine biology on Southern Fried Science, told NBC News, "but the official guess that it could be a thresher shark seems plausible."

However Shiffman also thinks it could be an oarfish. The ribbon-like fish typically measures 30 feet but can grow as long as 33 feet. They also have fins on their head which can look like horns.

Another expert, Florida State University ichthyologist Dean Grubbs was confident that it was actually a shark.

"That is definitely a shark skeleton," Grubbs 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."