New London—As Tom and Bobbette Clapsadle of Waterford strolled along the water at Ocean Beach Park Sunday afternoon with their two sons, they spotted an almost alien-looking corpse lying amongst the seaweed.

We said, 'Oh my God, look at that,' ” said Tom Clapsadle.

The first thing Bobbette thought they had discovered was the celebrated creature known as the “Montauk monster.”

About two and half feet long with powerful shoulders and a pointed, turtlelike snout, the Ocean Beach carcass looks very much like a fleshy, beaked creature found in July on Long Island. Stories and photos about that discovery appeared in newspapers and on television and there was rampant Internet speculation about what is was. Some joked it must have been the result of an experiment gone bad at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. The Montauk animal was never identified with certainty.

The Clapsadles, who had seen a report on television about the Montauk monster, said it looked like the same thing to them. They reported the find to the Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration, which said it might look at the creature today once it had seen photos.

Tom Clapsadle said the corpse had no strong odor and the seagulls did not seem interested in it, something he found strange. Others on the beach speculated it might be a sea turtle, dog, fisher cat or raccoon.

Maggie Jones, director of the Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center in Mystic, said Sunday night after examining photos that her best initial guess would be a raccoon.

“I'm quite certain of it,” she said. “The arrangement of the teeth look like a raccoon and the skull is pretty distinctive. It's nothing else I can think of.”

Still, the find left Bobbette Clapsadle a little uncomfortable.

“I'm not going to swim in the ocean if there's stuff like that out there,” she said.

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