Montauk Monster: What Was It?

(CANVAS STAFF REPORTS) - It may be a real-life X-File.

The "Montauk monster" is a mysterious carcass that washed up on July 13, 2008, on Montauk, Long Island, New York.

The website Montauk-Monster.com , was founded by a Suffolk County, N.Y., resident using the name Nicky Papers. Papers claimed a "weird creature" washed up ashore that looked like a dead dog at first glance but, after looking closer, "resembled something that I've never seen before."

AOL News reported that there was early speculation the creature was a turtle, a dog, a rodent or a mutant that escaped from the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.

A few weeks after the creature surfaced on the beach, Associated Content ran a statement from Dr. Larry Barrett, director of the disease center, saying it didn't come from there.

"I can state categorically that it is not associated with the work performed at Plum Island Animal Disease Center," he stated in the letter. "PIADC serves as the nation's first line of defense against foreign animal diseases of livestock by identifying such diseases through diagnostic testing and by developing vaccines to protect livestock from those diseases."

Barrett also said it is impossible to identify the species of animal from a photo.

"There is no scale from which to judge its size," he wrote. "Additionally, when a body has had prolonged exposure to water and predators, it can be altered or appear different from its normal form.

"If we had the actual body, we could tell you what it is; however, from viewing a canine tooth in the picture, we could guess it may be a cat or raccoon."

Easier said than done. The carcass soon disappeared after it was discovered.

Eric Olsen, a local real-estate agent, said that he had picked up the carcass off the beach and put it in a friend's back yard to rot. He said they were going to have an artist work with the bones, but the carcass went missing.

Noel Arikian, Olsen's friend, had told the East Hampton Star that it was decomposing in the woods near his home. He didn't talk up the mystery, though.

"In photos there appeared to be a beak," he said. "It was just a tricky angle. It's a dead raccoon. That's what it is. It's undoubtedly a raccoon, the same teeth, paws, the right size."

ScienceBlogs writer Darren Naish sides with Arikian. In a post he detailed why he believes it was in fact a raccoon.

Is the mystery over? Maybe not.

The website Curbed Hamptons talked of two other sightings in 2009 on Hampton's beaches. There were guesses that one was a "disintegrating seal."

The website had claimed that the monster encounters had totaled five since the first sighting at Montauk.