“Faceless sea monster” on a beach in Yorkshire has British experts baffled

Scientists have proposed their own options

On a beach in North Yorkshire, UK, researcher Caroline Pindar made a mysterious discovery: a mysterious faceless sea animal the size of three women. Experts do not understand who this animal could be. Scientists build different versions.

Caroline Pindar was exploring rock pools in Heyburn Wyke, North Yorkshire, when she noticed strange remains. She described it this way: “This place is remote and can only be reached on foot. There was a strong storm and there was a lot of foam among the stones. From a distance, I wondered if the remains were foam or washed-up fishing debris—there’s a lot of that kind of pollution around here. But when I got closer, it was too big.”

The scientist noted that the remains were badly decomposed, bones were sticking out of the skin, and piles of fat lay on one side of the “monster”: “The way it was hunched over gave the impression that the exposed bones were walrus tusks. Neither the head nor the tail were obvious. The smell was very strong.”

Pindar estimates that the creature was 16 feet long (almost 5 meters). Searching for answers, Caroline, 61, shared her photos with a marine life specialist group online, but there was no clear consensus on what she found.

One expert replied: “They look like tusks, so I think it’s a walrus.”

Another put forward the theory that it was a minke whale. Others suggested that it was a seal or some kind of large dolphin. Even experts from the UK’s Stranded Cetacean Research Program are stuck trying to accurately identify the find.

Project manager Rob DeVille said: “It’s a bit more complicated! It looks like the decomposed remains of a larger cetacean – I think I can see the remains of folds on the throat in one of the images. Given the size of the person in the background, I might be leaning towards something like a minke whale. But honestly, it’s hard to say given the decomposition. Maybe I would just call it an unidentified or unidentified baleen whale?

But for Caroline Pindar herself, these answers were unconvincing: “I have seen dead porpoises here in various stages of decomposition, and also seen/smelled a decomposing whale in the water in Orkney, but nothing like that. My overwhelming feeling was sadness that the animal had died. Then anxiety, bewilderment as to how and why he died.”