Mysterious 'Alien' Sea Creature Washes Up On Shore, Baffles Beachgoer

A mysterious sea creature, which looks like "the alien from Independence Day" movie, washed up on a California beach over the weekend.

A San Francisco State University graduate student was walking her dogs on Ocean Beach near Taraval when she came across the creature.

"I was really fascinated when I saw it, as I had never seen anything like it before," Eleanor Morgan said, according to SF Gate. A picture shared on Reddit shows the creature with a long, pointed snout. It appeared to be just over three feet long. Its torso was smooth, flat, gray and mottled with sand.

"I don't think it had been on the beach for very long because it didn't smell at all and the tide looked like it was coming in," Morgan said.

The image shared by Morgan received hundreds of comments, with users trying to guess what the creature was. One user said it looked like a giant squid, while another said it resembled the "the alien from Independence Day."

However, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute later identified the creature as a male shovelnose guitarfish. Finding this creature on a beach is "likely an unremarkable occurrence," Paul Clarkson, director of husbandry operations at the aquarium, told SF Gate.

"Animals die all the time, of course; sometimes those carcasses wash ashore. If this was part of a larger group of animals being washed up all at once, that might suggest a different story," he said.

Shovelnose guitarfish gets its name because of its body shape. The creature is related to skates and rays, but lacks a venomous barb and is harmless to people. The species lives on shallow, sandy seafloors, where it feasts on crabs, clams, worms and small fish.

"Shovelnose guitarfish are relatively common and abundant along our coastline," Vikki McCloskey, a curator at the California Academy of Science's Steinhart Aquarium, said. "San Francisco is at the northern end of their range, but still well within 'normal' for this species."

This is not the first time a mysterious sea creature has washed up on a shore.

Earlier this month, two beachgoers stumbled upon a terrifying sea creature as they paddled in the sea in southwest England. It was later found that the creature was an anglerfish, usually found half a mile underwater. The rare fish had staggered 9,000 miles from its home in the Pacific Ocean.