It was like a Mock Ness monster.
A baffled British beachcomber experienced vex on the beach after sharing pics of a bizarre beast they found washed ashore — with many viewers comparing it to the legendary Loch Ness monster. The perplexing jetsam was reportedly discovered in November but only recently surfaced on Reddit, where it’s currently making waves as users try to make heads or tails of it.
“It looked like a sea monster,” Lindsay Freeman told Pen News of the freaky flotsam, which she found while “walking on the beach” in Poole, Dorset.
“It caught my eye because it was so unusual-looking and large,” Freeman described the beast. “I couldn’t think of an animal that had a tail like a shark, but also legs like a turtle. It also looked like it had little arms and a very strange head.”
Accompanying photos show the spotted creature, which seems to have four flippers, a long neck and a tail like a plesiosaur — the extinct dinosaur that prompted the infamous Loch Ness monster myth.
Flummoxed by the flotsam, she sent her family a photo of the mystery critter with the hope that they could provide an “explanation.”
Unfortunately, no one in her immediate circle could identify the critter, but Reddit’s ever-helpful commentariat was quick to take the Loch Ness premise and run with it.
“Bro it’s clearly a baby Loch Ness monster,” one armchair cryptozoologist joked.
“Baby Loch Ness monster for sure,” declared another, while one social media jokester added, “Baby plesiosaurus! Your discovery will be famous!”
Some Redditors even claimed it was a “liopleurodon,” a now-extinct marine predator that roamed the seas during the Jurassic period hundreds of millions of years ago.
Realists were quick to throw cold water on that theory, though, with many claiming that the creature was actually the mutilated remains of a UK-dwelling stingray called a marine thornback.
“It’s a winged thornback ray,” theorized one Redditor. “Doesn’t look like it’s been winged correctly, you’re supposed to cut around their snout so the two wings stay connected. We called the filleted wings handbags.”
Another wrote: “It looks like the ray has been predated upon. The fins have been eaten.”
“Line caught, wings removed, carcass left,” lamented one backseat biologist. “Hopefully, fishermen killed before butchering.”
This isn’t the first time a discovery has sparked rumors of the Loch Ness monster resurfacing.
In September, an Irish man who monitors newly installed, high-resolution webcams around Loch Ness in Scotland claimed he’d captured the “giant eel-like shapes” that make up Nessie.
