By Tim Binnall
A woman walking along a beach in Egypt was aghast when she stumbled upon the hideous remains of a mysterious sea creature which she likened to a monster from Lord of the Rings. The nightmarish find (which can be seen below) was reportedly made by Andrea Jud as she and some friends were visiting the popular diving site Gabr el-Bint near the coastal community of Dahab. As they strolled along the shore, she spotted the curious carcass in the sand and could not believe her eyes. "I didn't touch it, just looking at it made me feel uneasy," Jud recalled, "it freaked me out. It looked like a Lord of the Rings orc."
To that end, she noted that the aquatic oddity sported a "distinctive head, with an open mouth showing sharp teeth" and that it's "skin was dry and dark grey and patchy." The creature's cranium sat atop a long, curled body that Jud compared to that of a seahorse. Proving to have taken a good look at the dead animal, she also noted that it was approximately "the length of my arm" and that "the head was bigger than my fist." Ultimately, Jud mused that the monstrous denizen of the deep "was gruesome to look at and reminded me of the reality of death."
Curious as to what the strange remains could have been, Jud snapped a picture of the beast and posted it to a marine biology Facebook group. As one might imagine, horrified observers offered a variety of ideas with some jokingly suggesting that the creature was a mermaid or a mini Loch Ness Monster. More seasoned sea life enthusiasts offered the prosaic explanation that the animal appeared to be a moray eel that had been made to look monstrous by the blistering sun. Though that may be the case, Jud observed that there was something else weird about the discovery as she found the carcass fairly far inland and much further than the waves could have carried, which raises the question of how it wound up there in the first place.