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Beach discovery of a mysterious animal that looks like a plesiosaurus

Credits: Screenshot YouTube / Jeff Warren / SavannahNow.com

The body of an unidentified creature with a long neck and a small head, which strangely resembles a plesiosaurus or the mythical Loch Ness monster, has been found on a beach in Georgia in the United States. Specialists believe that it is in fact the corpse of a decomposed shark. 

A strange animal that washed up on a beach in Georgia recently made the papers, due to its resemblance to the legendary Loch Ness monster. Some people see it more as a plesiosaurus, a large marine reptile from the Mesozoic Era. An American tourist, Jeff Warren, noticed the long-necked animal while he was sailing with his son near Wolf Island, and he filmed what he saw. Birds had already started to peck at the animal when it was found.

With its long neck and fins, this 1.5 meter long animal looks more like a kind of prehistoric sea monster than anything we know of nowadays in our oceans. For the moment, experts from the US Fish and Wildlife Service still have many questions. But the internet community have also taken the matter in hand. There is in fact a local legend about “Altie”, or “Altahamaha-ha”, which is none other than the Georgian version of the Loch Ness monster.

Dan Ashe, the director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, notes on the other hand that marine animals often decompose in this way, resembling a plesiosaurus with a long neck and a small head. More precisely, he suggests that this could be a basking shark, the largest fish in the world after the whale shark, and the largest fish in the North Atlantic. They can reach 12 meters in length for a weight of at least 4 tons.

The basking shark is not on the protected species list in certain European countries. However, it has been considered an endangered species since 1996 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). In the North Atlantic, the species has been considered in danger of extinction since the year 2000.

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