without giving away the answer, here's some context:
USF scientists solve Chilean “blob” mystery
TAMPA, Fla. (Jan. 8, 2004) - When a huge, unidentifiable, gelatinous blob weighing 13 tons and measuring 41 feet long and 19 feet wide washed up on a beach in Chile in July, 2003, many speculated that it was the remains of a giant sea monster. (
www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/07/02/giant.find/).
Photograph copyright © Elsa Cabrera/COC
Similar, documented blobs, often thought to be the remains of giant squids, had turned up on beaches elsewhere, including one in St. Augustine, Fla. in 1896, two in Bermuda (1995 and 1997), in Tasmania in 1960 and Nantucket, Mass. in 1996. All the blobs looked pretty much the same, says Skip Pierce, professor of biology at the University of South Florida who is presenting the results of his blob bio-sleuthing today at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in New Orleans (
www.sicb.org).
"In all cases, the blobs were thought to be possible sea monsters, but the decomposed carcasses lacked a skeleton,” said Pierce. “Elsa Cabrera, director of the Center for Cetacean Conservation in Santiago, sent us samples of the 2003 Chilean blob and we compared it microscopically and genetically to preserved samples of other historical blobs, including the 1896 blob.”