7. The Stronsay Beast
This is the story of yet another globster that washed ashore on the Orkney Islands of Scotland in 1808. The carcass measured nearly sixty feet in length, though part of the tail was missing so it can safely be assumed that the creature was even longer than that.
The Natural History Society examined the corpse and could not identify it. Scottish anatomist John Barclay gave it the scientific name Halsydrus pontoppidani, or the Pontoppidan’s sea-snake. Later, another anatomist dismissed all of the stories, claimed that it was much smaller and was simple the decaying corpse of a basking shark.
It may never be truly known what this creature is, but the stories of its appearance and debate over its identification continue to circulate the internet to this day.
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