A dog walker was left stumped after happening upon a strange creature while walking on the beach.
However, due to the animal's advanced stage of decomposition it was difficult to actually tell what the mysterious creature actually was.
It was spotted by Jem, 42, who had been out walking her dogs along the beach in Australia.
While it's difficult to see, there is a clear head with eye sockets, as well as the spine jutting out of the back, along with what remains of a pectoral fin.
It looks like the remains of some sort of bony fish, but apart from that it's a mystery.
Jem recalled the moment that she spotted the creature, saying: “We've been having really wild storms in Victoria for the last few weeks so perhaps the storm surges caused it to wash up.
“My dogs discovered it on the beach and were sniffing around it. The fish looked really spooky. Its eye sockets were massive."
She added: "We swim at the beach every week in summer so I was pretty shocked to think of such a big fish washing up there."
As for what it could be, Jem was not sure.
She said: “People said it could be a giant sunfish, a globefish or a pufferfish. It did look like a pufferfish but I've never seen one that big before.”
Lawrence Chlebeck, a marine biologist at Humane Society International was also unsure as to exactly what species the creature was.
Chlebeck did think that it was a bony fish, or teleost, narrowing it down to only around 26,000 species.
Nonetheless he did think that the most likely candidates for it were either a tuna or a grouper due to its large size.
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