Is British Airways really planning on charging passengers for meals?
03:15 BST, May 17, 2016
Extremely rare bowhead whale seen off Cornish coast in shallow waters
11:21 BST, May 17, 2016A scary beach monster at Port Talbot in south Wales, UK, has experts at a loss – nobody is certain what the remains of the creature might be. The mysterious animal, that appears to have been a type of marine life-form, could well have been some kind of dinosaur, several visitors have suggested.
The skeleton of the creature, which measures 11 feet (3.35 metres) in length, has been on Morfa Beach at the Kenfig rivermouth since February.
Photographs of the enigmatic creature have been posted online on Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks by several people in a call for experts to come forward and try and identify it.
Images of the mysterious creature have gone viral on social media websites. (Image: twitter.com/hellohistoria)
Suggestions have ranged from a *throwback from the dinosaurs, an alien whose craft was burned up as it entered Earth’s atmosphere, to the charred remains of a long-finned pilot whale.
* Throwback is a reversion to an earlier ancestral characteristic – a feature that disappeared several generations ago, and then came back.
Creature has become a major visitor attraction
BBC News quotes Melanie Rees who says she and her husband Mike are used to seeing a range of creatures on the sands, including jellyfish – but nothing like the 11 foot animal.
Mrs. Rees said:
“At first I thought it was a piece of driftwood or a big log as it was so far off the beach. But when we got closer, I could see thousands of flies and I knew it had been an animal.”
What do you think it is? A throwback from a creature that no longer exists, a type of whale, or something else? (Image: Facebook)
She began posting photographs of it on social media websites to try and see whether anybody could identify it.
“People on Facebook have been hilarious. One has even said it could be a dinosaur, but I’m not so sure,” Mrs. Rees added.
The remains have become a major visitor attraction, luring people from hundreds of miles away. Who knows, as in other parts of the world, perhaps a legend regarding the Monster of Port Talbot will now emerge, thus placing the town permanently on the map for mystery-creature seekers.
Could it be a long-finned pilot whale?
The long-finned pilot whale (Globicephala melas) is a large species of dolphin found in the North Atlantic. They have unusually long pectoral fins, hence their name.
Three long-finned pilot whales swimming and a skeleton. The most common suggestion is that this mystery creature is a long-finned pilot whale that somehow got burnt up. (Images: Top – walesforever.com. Bottom – Wikipedia)
They have been observed off the coast and sometimes washed up on the beach in Western Europe and Eastern North America, as far north as the Faroe Islands and south as North Africa.
Video – Strange creature washed up on Port Talbot beach
On this video, taken by a visitor, you can see the mystery creature from several angles.