A decomposing pinkish-grey carcass measuring 41 feet across and weighs around 13 tons was found on a pacific beach.
At first it was mistaken for a beached whale. In Chile's capital Santiago, 700 miles from where the mass came ashore, expert Elsa Cabrera said: "It might be a giant squid that is missing some of its parts or maybe it's a new species." Most of the world's oceans are still a deep, dark mystery.
Because more than 60 per cent of them are more than a mile deep and virtually inaccessible, we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the sea bed.
Paul Tyler, Professor in Deep Sea Biology at the University of Southampton, said: "It's far too big to be a jellyfish. Without seeing it or touching it, we have absolutely no idea what it is at all. But it's also possible that it's not organic. It could be some ghastly piece of plastic that's been dumped at sea and started to rot."
But zoology experts said last night it closely resembled a bizarre specimen found in Florida in 1896 that was named "octopus giganteus" and has confounded experts ever since.