Updated

A North Carolina National Park service is having trouble identifying a mysterious, spiny object that washed up on a beach over the weekend and is asking for the public’s help.

A passerby found the “weird” worm-like object covered in what appeared to be white thorns at Shackleford Banks on Saturday, Cape Lookout National Seashore wrote on Facebook. The park service guessed it was “a plumed worm case,” but “have no idea what the bony structures might be.”

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Some commenters agreed, writing that it could be a tube worm that created a case using the white, boney structures. Others were left bewildered by the discovery.

“I’m not saying it’s aliens, but...” one user joked.

But many disagreed with the tube worm hypothesis, leaving their guesses in the post's more than 70 comments. Others believed it was a decomposing pufferfish.

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Meanwhile, a balloon-like creature that resembled a jellyfish washed up on a separate North Carolina beach on Sunday.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore identified the creature as a Portuguese man o’ war, "a colony of individual organisms working as one."