A foul stench was emanating from the rotting carcass pulled aboard a Japanese fishing trawler that left fishermen baffled, some believing it to be a modern-day dinosaur

A bizarre ‘dinosaur’ discovery that left experts fascinated (Image: Wild World / YouTube)

The captain of the crew aboard the Japanese trawler, Zuiyo Maru, elected to return it to the sea to avoid risking the caught fish’s fresh status – but the crew were left baffled.

The vessel was operating east of Christchurch off the coast of New Zealand and the fishermen involved were confident that they had unearthed an “unknown animal.”

Although acknowledging the potential scientific significance, Captain Akira Tanaka decided the rotting body needed to be disposed of back into the ocean depths.

Fishermen were convinced they may have discovered a ‘modern day dinosaur’ (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto

This decision wasn’t taken before photographs and samples of the bewildering creature’s skeleton, skin, and fins fondly given the nickname ‘Nessie’ were seized for future study.

The creature came with quite the description; a long neck, four large reddish fins, and a tail reaching about 2m in length.

Speculation ran rampant following this discovery with many, even so far as university scientists from Yokohama and Tokyo, speculating it could be a sea serpent or a plesiosaur a species believed to have met its end alongside the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago.

The findings took Japan by storm, inciting a wave of what was termed the “plesiosaur craze”. This frenzy led to the shipping company instructing all of their boats to try to find the discarded corpse once more, albeit unfortunately with no success.

However, other boffins weren’t so sure, with Swedish fossil expert Hans-Christian Bjerring commenting: “If it’s true that the Japanese collected samples of fins and skin, it would be possible to conclude from a microscope what it is.

“If it would be shown to be a hitherto unknown animal from the sea, it is as big of a sensation as the discovery of the coelacanth in 1938… but there is reason to be suspicious of the claims of plesiosaurs, for example, as the marine environment and fauna changed drastically since the age of the plesiosaurs on earth.”

In the end, the experts decided they couldn’t say for sure what the mysterious remains were, but they reckoned it was probably a basking shark or something similar. When basking sharks start to rot, they lose their snouts and fins first, which can make them look like prehistoric paddlers.