A 3-foot sea beast with buck teeth that doesn’t look much like a legless crocodile was found stranded in Virginia, US, by a man who has developed a habit of seeing them.
A huge armored sea creature has been discovered washed up on a deserted beach.
While Allen Sklar was driving around Assateague Island in Virginia, USA, he saw a beast lying motionless in the sand and immediately stopped to take a closer look.
It soon became apparent that this was no ordinary fish out of water, but a strange-looking armored beast dating back to the time of the dinosaurs.
Measuring about three feet long, the animal boasted a fairly large bite with its superior crunches on display beneath an outstretched pointy nose, Newsweek reports.
Fortunately for Allen, it was not the first time he had encountered such a strange creature, so he managed to calmly capture what he recognized as an Atlantic sturgeon.
Allen said he found the fish on the beach of Assateague Island, a 37-mile-long strip of land, and quickly took some photos of the creature.
Allen told Newsweek: “I drive the 12 miles of beach about 100 days a year and see a lot of things that others don’t see. “This was the second sturgeon I have seen in 27 years driving around the island.”
He captioned a photo of the fish on Facebook: “This 37-inch fish is a true member of the dinosaurs.
“It has no scales, just rows of hard plates called scutes. A bottom feeder, it will eat almost anything, including clams, mussels, and dead fish.
“Under their chin are four whiskers called barbels that are used to feel the bottom for food. The mouth is hard and bony without teeth.
“This one is small, researchers have found them up to 160 pounds in the rivers and tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay and [they] can weigh over a thousand pounds in other parts of the world.
“Overexploited to the point of near extinction, they were placed on the endangered species list in 2012.”
The Atlantic sturgeon is a prehistoric fish that can be found in rivers and coastal waters and can grow up to 14 feet long.
