'Dragon' corpse washes ashore in Spain

Mythical creatures that continue to confound

Evidence of legendary creatures like Nessie and the elusive Bigfoot blur the line between fact and fiction.

Dragon, Loch Ness Monster or really strange fish? Photos of a mystery creature washed ashore on the beaches of Andalusia in Spain have beach goers crying mutant fish.

"We have no idea what it could be," Civil Protection coordinator Maria Sanchez told Spanish newspaper Levante. "A woman found a piece [of the animal] and we helped her get the rest."

The rotting corpse runs a little over 13 feet and is in an advanced stage of decomposition, according to the Spanish news outlet.

"It's hard to tell [what the animal is]," University of Miami shark researcher David Shiffman told NBC on Twitter. "but the official guess that it could be a thresher shark seems plausible."

The creature is so far along in its decomposition that experts in Spain are relying on images of the corpse to help them determine what the sea monster is.