A man stumbled upon what he called an “alien” creature’s corpse during a walk on a beach in Queensland, Australia, last week, sparking hundreds of internet theories about what the strange-looking creature with the “humanlike hands” and “long lizard tail” could be.
Alex Tan initially recorded clips of his encounter with it on March 21 at Maroochydore Beach, over 60 miles away from Brisbane, according to the social media video service agency Storyful. He uploaded videos to his Instagram page on Tuesday that showed the creature laying on the beach.
“I’ve stumbled across something weird,” he said in one of the videos. “This is like one of those things you see when people claim that they’ve found aliens.”
“Looks like a deerhead possum, but different than anything I’ve seen,” he said in another clip.
He told Storyful that the animal had “humanlike hands, long lizard tail, nose like a possum and patches of black fur.”
From “mini-Chupa-cabra” to “extinct marsupial,” hundreds of Instagram users dropped guesses about what they believed the creature to be. Stephen Johnson, an associate professor at the University of Queensland, told the Courier Mail that the animal was likely a swollen, waterlogged brushtail possum that lost its fur.
“The skull and hindlimb give the clues,” he said. “The animal was probably washed down into the ocean during the floods.”
Tan did not immediately respond to CBS News’ request for comment.
