It was first seen by villagers on July 20, according to Mei who breeds fish nearby, and is nearly 12 meters long and weighs around 2 tons, according to district sea and fishery bureau staff.
The animal reportedly has a long thin head and a snout nearly one meter long.
Partly rotten, with its spine exposed, it has been impossible to identify, but has been described as having some hair, and orange stripes across a three to four-meter wide belly. The skull, which alone weighs over 100 kg, and coccyx of the creature have fallen from its body.
Mei said four young people took away a 100 kg piece of the corpse to study and many experts have come to inspect it, but all in vain.
From the degree of putrefaction, the animal may have been dead for a week and beached by Typhoon Haitang several days ago, said Hu from Beilun’s sea and fishery bureau.
He said its overall structure means it’s unlikely to be a fish, but the shape of its head is like a crocodile’s.
(Full story: China.org)
As "neato gee whiz" as it would be to have dragon type creatures still around I'm kind of glad that the serpents of so many legends are dead or supposedly only lived in the vivid imaginations of ancient peoples of all nations. I suppose I could put a little dragon head on the prow of my windsurfing to scare away the sea serpents like the vikings and other sailors did. But somehow I doubt that doing that actually worked.
Generally, the establishment argues that the recurrent event of big unidentifiable carcasses washing up on shore are generally basking sharks, adolescent whales or even sea lions. E.g. "...every ten years or so a carcass is claimed to be a 'dinosaur' but always turns out to be a basking shark or adolescent whale."
Of course, a lot of those do wash up, it's all debatable.
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