When this grim snap of an odd-looking but decidedly dead creature was posted on the Manhattan news and gossip website Gawker on Tuesday 29 July, few could have predicted the typhoon of media attention it would trigger. Gawker described the hairless and bloated animal as “some sort of rodent-like creature with a dinosaur beak” which had been found by the photographer washed up on the beach at Montauk at the eastern end of New York’s Long Island. Within minutes, FT contributor Loren Coleman had it covered on his Cryptomundo blog site and baptised it the ‘Montauk Monster’.


Other blogs and media outlets picked it up in Loren’s wake as the topic spread out from the Hamptons into the greater audience of the Internet.