Don’t you love how the pictures we’d need to figure out what this is are mysteriously absent?
All this despite the photographer presumably being fully capable of taking picture that give us a better idea of what’s going on at the head end and with those horns. I bet the only camera within a hundred miles didn’t only have three exposures left. 
Seriously, it’s almost like they’re trying to make the reasonable explanation go away in exchange for sensationalism.
Oh. .wait. .
The aquatic ones have less in the legs department, just like dogs to seals.
They do indeed have head protrusions, those oar fish do:
My new favorite word is “Lampriform” and I will use it in the near future.
Also, “King of Herrings” would be a great name for a band.
Good night, all.
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Yeah, but that curvature we see, almost like tiny bull horns? That’s not apparent. Nor is that shape really the sort of thing you would (or do) see in such an otherwise streamlined and elongate aquatic animal.
That part screams 'fake!" or ‘only a tiny bit protrudes from the skin’, but I think we’re not seeing that head bit for a reason and it wasn’t a case of a dumb photographer and a camera that only could take three pictures.
I don’t know, some people struggle to read.
Obviously the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures has screwed up again and the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee is now trying to cover up by seeding lame alternatives in these comments.
Not a frill shark, but it is shark related. Its the cartilaginous back bone of a large, heavily decayed shark, maybe a basking shark, but some sort of big shark… The protrusions on the spine everyone is noting are spinous processes, the “horns” are part of the pectoral girdle that support the pectoral fins.
Every so often a fishing boat will net a dead basking shark or whale shark that is partly decayed. The jaws and gills fall off fairly early in decomposition and the a left with a protruding spines that look like thin necks. Photos wind up in newspapers of the prehistoric monster caught in whatever ocean, but they are so foul the carcass gets tossed overboard. Months later there will be small stories about how the “plesiosaur” was identified as probably a rotten shark. This will be too.
Totally in agreement on the shark, but are we talking about the same ‘protrusions’, I was wondering about the ‘horns’ that we never seem to get a look at, since that curvature didn’t really seem to fit the . . .wait a sec.
Could that be the pelvic girdle? Or the cartilage that supports the clapsers?
Some folks are saying protrusions and some horns. I can see both. The nobby things at the “tail” are spinous processes. The horns just beyond the head are the separated pectoral girdle, and the smaller “horns” still attached to the “neck” are what remains of the gill arches. The jaws are long gone, as are the fins.
Yeah, it was the ones beyond the head that threw me.
I was leaning pectoral girdle, but part of me was secretly hoping that was the claspers.
Not just because then we’d know the gender of the shark, but also because they put it’s penis on the head end, which is kind of funny 
I live near there and the news story makes me blush. Sad thing is, PROMAR (association for sea life protection) don’t take care of the carcass because "it was not a turtle or a dolphin" and “smelled bad”. Public organisms like Civil Protection and Police don’t care, so the remains were interred. Further analysis from PROMAR experts on the three blurry photos concluded the thing was “some kind of fish”.
Science at work, man! It’s like a XIX century story. No proofs, no interest, the legend is born.
Curiously, in Spanish we have an expression for this: “Serpiente de verano” (summer serpent)
commenters spoke of a ‘Loch Ness Monster’, 'mutant fish ', and made a lot of humorous comments.
They are laughing now.
It would be a good band name…or conceptual album name! I would want to listen to it ; )
Interesting, I was aware of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_and_Teller:_Bullshit!
But I had not heard of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_and_Teller:_Fool_Us
Aha, perhaps because the latter was exclusively British.
Don’t forget Penn & Teller Tell a Lie. That didn’t last long though.
All the episodes of Penn and Teller fool us are on youtube. I thought it was a great show.
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