Earlier this week, Gawker, a New York gossip blog, posted a picture of what appeared to be a strange sea creature that was washed on the Montauk beach after a storm. The blog post, which bared the title “Dead Monster Washes Ashore in Montauk” gave several possible explications for the origin of the bizarre creature, one of them being that it was part of a viral marketing campaign.

The images led to an interesting Internet debate, in which people posted responses giving their opinion on what the creature might be. The “Montauk Monster,” as it became known, bares resemblance to a skinned dog, but has a dinosaur-like beak and pointy teeth.

Some of the animals that the people thought that the creature might be are dogs, raccoons and shell-less turtles (even though such an animal doesn't exist in real life, and the lack of the shell might suggest a genetic abnormality).

Scientists have rushed to say that the monster cannot be any of these creatures. It seems that its feet are too wide apart to be a raccoon, its eye ridge is not that of a dog and turtles don't have teeth. What is more, its back feet look like sheep feet, while its front ones have strangely elongated paws.

Scientists believe that either the picture was created using Photoshop or that somebody used latex or other materials that can resemble skin to create this strange animal. However, looking back to those days when a dead platypus was shown to scientists for the first time, some of them though that the animal was the creation of a taxidermist.