is this photoshop or for real?

[Mom27andblessed]

http://www.wnbc.com/news/17047883/detail.html#

I think it looks like a turtle without a shell...tho I've never seen one. What do you all think?

[Vetteography]

I would like to know why the shadows are so inconsistent.

Look at the haunch. The sun is at an angle great enough for a small rock.wart on the skin casts a sharp outlined shadow on the ground, yet the kelp/rag on the fore paw doesn't. There are two more warts in about the same position, relative to the sun. One further down the haunch and one up on the belly, neither casting a shadow.

The light is obviously from the upper left yet the there is almost no shadow on either of the rear legs and the shadow on the head is at the wrong angle. Then you look at the shadow cast by the shoulder and neck, see the big goiter looking protrusion on the neck and wonder why it is not casting a sharp shadow like the rock/wart on the haunch.

Last, if you blow it up, you can see some serious linear pixelation on the ear, tail and rear legs. There are some clone marks around the "beak" that have lost detail when compared to the surrounding texture.

Last, look at the lower left hand quadrant of the picture at the sand. There is an area around the animal where the sand texture is changed, but no obvious reason for it. I think it was blended in photoshop.

I am sure there are more, but those are the things I noticed right off.

Anyhow... I am calling shenannigans. I think it is fake, and not a good one.

Another thought.... if you see a car wreck, there are a dozen folks with camera phones. Why is there only one picture from one angle and no one else got a single shot of this thing? And the convenient "mysterious stranger" taking the body away?

[Darsk47]

Chupacabra !

[CuriousAustin]

Chupacabra !

loch ness' off-spring :lol:

[yogestee]

To me it looks like its in the advanced state of decompositon..

BTW,,decomposition is not a photographic term!! :p

[Citizensmith]

Its on the internet so it must be real.

[PhotoJourno]

I watched early a pretty decent explanation about this particular photograph.

The animal -according to the physical features, paws, canine teeth, fur, etc- is a mammal, and a carnivore.

Aparently the beak is simply a speculation based in a lot of nothing. What seems to be a beak in the upper jaw, is simply a readily decomposing snout of what is possibly a dead dog, or some sort of racoon type of creature. So what appears to be the beak is really remnants of the jaw and upper canine teeth.

Because it is hard to scale the size of the creature against anything, it seems that it would be about two feet long.

This thing has definitely been floating along for a while, so it makes its physical features change dramatically, as well as skin pigmentation, hair, etc.

Anyhow, not all my smart conclusion, but as I said, from a US animal specialist.

[EDIT: About the speculation of turtle without shell. Not possible. a Turtle's spine is built into the shell, so there is no way a turtle could come out of a shell like that in a single piece (once more, paraphrasing Dr. Doolittle). :) ]