The St. Augustine Monster

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_augustine_carcass.jpg

On Nov. 30, 1896, two young boys came across an unidentified carcass on the beach near St. Augustine, Fla. Pale pink and rubbery, it was huge, 18 feet long and weighing an estimated 5 tons.

An analysis in 1971 agreed with early guesses that it was a gigantic octopus — in this case almost unthinkably huge, “with arms 75 to 100 feet in length and about 18 inches in diameter at the base — a total spread of some 200 feet.”

More recent studies in 1995 and 2004 say it was “the skin of an enormous warm-blooded vertebrate,” probably the entire blubber layer of a whale. Ick.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:O_giganteus16.jpg