page_title: St. Augustine Monster
section_title: Discovery
hierarchical_section_title: St. Augustine Monster / Discovery
context_page_description: The St. Augustine Monster is the name given to a large carcass, originally postulated to be the remains of a gigantic octopus, that washed ashore on the United States coast near St. Augustine, Florida in 1896. It is sometimes referred to as the Florida Monster or the St. Augustine Giant Octopus and is one of the earliest recorded examples of a globster. The species that the carcass supposedly represented has been assigned the binomial names Octopus giganteus and Otoctopus giganteus, although these are not valid under the rules of the ICZN.
  A 1995 analysis concluded that the St. Augustine Monster was a large mass of the collagenous matrix of whale blubber, likely from a sperm whale.
caption: A fanciful depiction of the Florida "sea monster" published in the Pennsylvania Grit.
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