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Beachgoers in South Carolina recently slip up upon an eerie , skeleton - like dolphinfish sprawled across the Baroness Dudevant , where it may have been easy drying out for calendar month . One expert suggests that the animal may have accidentally become strand after on purpose beaching itself .
On Jan. 14 , the Lowcountry Marine Mammal internet ( LMMN ) receive a call about a " mummified dolphin " near Hilton Head Island , the organization ’s illustration wrote in aFacebook Emily Price Post . LMMN military volunteer Amber Kuehn , a marine biologist and coordinator of theHilton Head Island Sea Turtle Patrol , visited the site to valuate and collect skin and tooth sample from the body , before forget the remains on the beach .
The desiccated remains of a bottlenose dolphin were found near Hilton Head Island in South Carolina on Jan. 14.
The dolphin was most likely a common bottlenose mahimahi ( Tursiops truncatus ) and was around 8 feet ( 2.4 cadence ) long , Kuehn told Live Science in an email . It was unclear how old or what sex the dolphin was , she add up .
" It was n’t actually mummify , " Kuehn say . " It was simply decomposed . " However , the layer of rot was unusually high , she lend .
Kuehn trust the carcase could be several weeks honest-to-god . However , Erich Hoyt , a research fellow at Whale and Dolphin Conservation ( WDC ) in the U.K. and author of several books on cetaceans , told Live Science that the corpse could be month old .
Another partially scavenged bottlenose dolphin was discovered on a South Carolina beach on Jan. 13.
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The corpse appears to have completely dried out due to its dry surroundings and being continually exposed to the Lord’s Day , Hoyt said . But it is unusual that the body desiccated to this extent while remain fully intact , he add .
commonly , stay on like these would be picked clean by scavengers . For example , the daylight before this cadaver was plant ( Jan. 13 ) , LMMN volunteer were cry to another bottlenose dolphin body near Botany Bay on Edisto Island . This clay appear to be similarly decomposed , but it had already been intemperately scavenge .
The mummified mahimahi may have dried out somewhere else before washing up at Hilton Head Island , LMMN representatives write . But this is heavy to test .
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However , an interesting bottlenose dolphin behavior could explain how the two dolphins ended up on their several beach .
Small groups of bottlenose dolphins in South Carolina havepreviously been seencollectively surging onto the shore to drag small Pisces onto land in their viewing , enable them to clean off the helpless prey before roll up back into the water , Hoyt enounce . But if an case-by-case lunges too far , it is possible they could become strand and die before eventually desiccate , he sum .
But this is just one theory , and there is " no evidence of this having happened " in these recent shell , Hoyt aver .
