Massive Skull Found on New Jersey Beach on Memorial Day Has Been Identified

Earlier this week, authorities from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection announced they’d discovered a massive unidentified animal skull on Island Beach State Park on Memorial Day.

They shared a photo of the bones and wrote, “You never know what you are going to find on the beach after a storm! Our State Park Police found this skull at Island Beach State Park on Monday. As soon as we identify it, we'll let you know.”

Of course, many threw ideas around about what the skull could be. Some guesses included a pterodactyl skull and a reptile skull. One person even wrote, “Obviously, the seagull that steals my fries every summer."

Now they have updated followers that they’ve determined what it was.

“We have confirmed that this is the ventral (lower) jaw and skull of a Minke whale,” they wrote.

Per Whales.org, minke whales are the smallest of all baleen whales. They grow to be 29 to 32 feet long, and weigh around 20,000 pounds. They are found in oceans all over the world.

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