A fisherman's freakish discovery of a lifeless shark has been described as the "stuff of nightmares".
The massive-eyed beast was pulled from the deep sea off Australia with a protruding white mouth and seriously pointed nose and a snap of it has caused quite a stir online.
Trapman Bermagui from Sydney has been baffled by his unlikely catch from 2,133 feet underwater, as have social media users who offered their own theories from the sensible to the hilarious.
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Since uploading a snap of the predator's head to Facebook on Monday (September 14), it has been liked over 1,000 times and commented on by around 250 people.
One person reacted: "Stuff of nightmares there."
"Looks really happy he's just had his braces off so is accentuating the gums and teeth," a second wrote.
A third even suggested it wasn't a real shark at all, they said: "Man made.. either a sculptor or mixing of DNA with the assistance of the crisper…."
To several more sensible Facebook users, the mystery creature is a cookie cutter shark but Trapman has shut down the claims and given his own identification.
He told Newsweek: ""Totally not a cookiecutter. It's a rough skin shark, also known as a species of endeavour dog shark.
"These sharks are common in depths greater than 600 meters. We catch them in the wintertime usually."
Dean Grubbs, who is the associate director of research at the Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory, has offered his own expert opinion to Newsweek.
He said: "In my deep-sea research, we have caught quite a few of them in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Bahamas.
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"Ours have come from depths of 740 to 1160 meters (~2,400 to 3,800 feet), so a bit deeper than this report. They are in the family Somniosidae, the Sleeper Sharks, the same family of the Greenland Shark, but obviously a much smaller species."
The roughskin dogfish is described online as growing up to 4ft long and boasting a short mouth with thick lips which are unlikely to be seen anywhere above depths of 4,920 feet.
Christopher Lowe, professor and director of the California State University Long Beach Shark Lab, disagreed.
He said: "Looks to me like a deepwater kitefin shark, which are known in the waters off Australia. It looks like Dalatias lata to me; however, we discover new species of deepwater shark all the time and many look very similar to each other."
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