By Tim Binnall
A beachgoer in North Carolina stumbled upon a truly strange object that has left wildlife experts scratching their heads. The puzzling oddity was discovered along an area known as Shackleford Banks on Saturday. The person who found the weird object showed it to staff from the National Park Service and they posted images of the curiosity on their Facebook page.
In the post, the NPS called upon their social media followers for "some help identifying this object" and shared three photos of the find, which seems to sport some kind of spiky exterior. Remarkably, the department conceded that "we're stumped as to what it might be." They speculated that perhaps it could be "a plumed worm case which was created using the white, bony structures," however that came with the caveat that they have "no idea" what those pointy parts of the object were.
In keeping with the world of social media, Facebook users offered up all manner of suggestions as to what the mystery object may have been, including catfish remains, a malformed starfish, and, of course, an alien. A number of people theorized that the oddity could have been the skeleton of a porcupine fish. A follow-up response from the NPS stated that the consensus among staff so far is that, indeed, the spikes likely came from a creature along those lines and that they had become part of a worm tube.