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Woman discovers horrifying creature washed up on beach, Twitter helps ID it

BY ISOBEL HAMILTON From Mashable

Everyone loves a stroll on the beach, why else would people mention it so much in dating profiles? Walking hand-in-hand with a loved one, the sea air ruffling your hair, the gentle lapping of the waves — what could be nicer? Oh, and don’t forget the desiccated sea-monster lying on the sand.

Photographer Preeti Desai got at least one of these things when she was walking on a beach in Texas. Guess which one…

Let’s take a closer look at the lil’ buddy.

What a loveable toothy maw! Desai reached out to aquatic experts on Twitter to help her identify the cutie-pie. The experts contributed rationally enough…

Andrew Thaler

@DrAndrewThaler

Replying to @preetalina and 2 others

Hard to tell given position and decomposition, but teeth and body shape makes me think some kind of eel.

@SolomonRDavid

Replying to @DrAndrewThaler and 3 others

I’d agree, could be some sort of eel; but not a moray, given it appears to have had pectoral fins. OR aquatic xenomorph…

It isn’t really an aquatic xenomorph though… right?

No, don’t be silly [laughs nervously].

Although there was a little debate, the consensus seems to be that the creature is a kind of snake-eel, quite possibly a fangtooth snake-eel to be precise, sometimes known as the tusky eel. This is NOT to be confused with the fangtooth moray eel, who looks like this:

Eel or no, the denizen of the deep has garnered quite a lot of media attention.

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