On October 25, 1924, witnesses at Margate, South Africa reported watching a huge white creature battle two killer whales offshore for three hours, using its tail to attack and lifting itself an estimated 20 feet out of the water. Farmer Hugh Ballance said it looked like a "giant polar bear." London's Daily Mail ran the story that December under the headline "Fish Like A Polar Bear," and the creature — described by never-identified witnesses as having snowy-white fur and an elephantine trunk — earned the nickname Trunko.
The carcass supposedly washed up on Margate Beach and lay there for ten days. No scientist ever examined it, so no reliable description exists, and for 86 years it was assumed no photographs had ever been published. Then, in September 2010, photos surfaced.
Paleontologist Darren Naish, reviewing them, wrote that they show "the rotting carcass of a large vertebrate, most likely a whale," with the "white fur" being frayed, badly decayed collagen. Trunko was a globster — the term for the unidentifiable masses of decomposed whale and blubber that wash ashore and launch sea monster legends.
Previously:
• Globsters: mysterious organic masses that wash up on the shore
