A terrifying looking sea beast dubbed the “stuff of nightmares ” was found washed up on a beach – but is not as fearsome as it seems.

Terran Walker was visiting Shaw’s Beach on Prince Edward Island, Canada, with her family when they spotted the creature.

The gobsmacked 26-year-old took several photos which showed the creature’s rows of fearsome looking teeth with its long black body stretched out in the sand.

Sharing the images online, people described the carcass as “the stuff of nightmares”, while another joked it was the reason they do not swim in the ocean.

Terran said: “I was shocked and amazed we were the ones to find it, but also sad to think about how it ended up there and whether it suffered.

The creature was seen with rows of teeth ( Image: Credit: Terran Walker/Pen News)

“At first we thought it was a small shark, due to the teeth, which were extremely sharp. It smelled a bit like rotten flesh and it looked very dried up and crunchy.

“The head area was pretty decayed so you could see inside under the flesh and see the large skull. It looked like it was smiling or was in the middle of biting because the mouth was open wide and all the teeth were being displayed.

“With a lot of the suggestions, I didn’t think that was what it was, some people even said tuna and salmon and I knew it wasn’t those.”

Laura Bourque, a wildlife pathologist working with the Canadian Wildlife Health Co-operative, revealed that far from fearsome, the carcass was likely a dolphin.

She added: “The kind of picture that is stirring everyone up is that one that’s kind of taken front-on where you see all the teeth, but this happens to me all the time.

“With wildlife pictures, the optics of the two-dimensional image tend to skew things a little bit.

“The specimen isn’t all that big but, in that picture, looks terrifying, right?

“Over the course of the winter, it was preserved quite a bit and then it started to decompose when it got to this time of year. It started looking fairly manky.”

Terran said the identity of the creature caught her by surprise. She explained: “I didn’t realise dolphins had that many teeth and they were that sharp

“I remember saying to the people I was with ‘wow imagine that biting onto your leg in the water’ because I thought it was a small shark or something.

“Then I looked up dolphin teeth and immediately knew it had to be that – especially with the shape of the jaw/mouth.”