Montauk "Monster"? Mystery Solved by NowPublic members, New Photos! (montauk monster washed up on shore of long island.avi)

Excitement over the Montauk Monster has reached a fever pitch! He was on CNN. New photos have emerged (that make it clear he's a he), as well as several people who claim to have the remains. But still, no one has definitively identified the beast. On the Internet and elsewhere, theories abound: Is it a Plum Island experiment gone wrong? An alien? A very fat raccoon, or a poor, poor puppy? Or part of a race of creatures who are slowly but surely taking over East Hampton? Below, your roundup of the latest monster news.

• Three women who claim to have taken the original photo were interviewed by Plum TV. For the record, Alanna Nevitksi,  is the woman who sent the original photo to Gawker. on Tuesday and whom we spoke to the other day, Her friend, the photographer, has still not spoken to the press.

• Wolf Blitzer was forced to report on the monster. CNN also dispatched a depressed-looking reporter to Montauk to interview a couple frat boys who claim to have the decomposing corpse

• Most disturbing, Newsday has a less-decomposed picture of the creature that really looks like a dog, specifically a pit bull

Fortunately, they make up for their sick reality check by giving us an alternate theory. According to locals, the Montauk Monster is not a anomaly. It is part of a race of monsters who have been recently cropping up in the area.

  No question about it. The creature found on July 13 on a Montauk beach, only a few miles west of where the government conducted the infamous Montauk Project time-travel experiments on children kidnapped from New York City streets, is definitely from outer space.

    No? How about a turtle without a shell, or a pug given a burial at sea from a passing yacht.

    Ever since Jenna Hewitt, Rachel Goldberg, and Courtney Fruin found the thing in front of the Surfside restaurant, the electronic clones of the creature have invaded computers — by way of Ms. Hewitt’s snapshot — until the Internet itself is threatened.

    “This is an actual monster, some sort of rodent-like creature with a dinosaur beak . . . a government animal-testing facility is close by,” according to the Phantoms and Monsters Web site, which picked up the story from Gawker.com on Tuesday.

    “. . . but unless the government is trying to design horrible Montauk Monsters that will eat I.E.D.s and fart fire at bad Iraqis, we’re not sure why they would create such an unthinkable beast,” a  blogger for the Web site wrote. “Our guess is it’s viral marketing for something.”

    “When plastic surgery goes wrong,” answered SuperConnie.

    “I ate one of those things once. They don’t taste bad,” joked JacquesPaysan.

. Conspiracy theorists have long speculated on the so-called Montauk Project, alleged to be secret government projects for the purpose of developing psychological weapons. The photo has fueled postings that the "beast" is linked to the shuttered tests. Wildlife experts have been quoted on various sites with much less exciting theories of a dead animal like a dog or raccoon.

THE photograhed remains of a mysterious "creature" washed up on a Long Island beach near New York has led to a frenzy of online speculation. Hot on the heels of claims from an ex-NASA astronaut about aliens visiting Earth, news of the find has excited conspiracy theorists around the world. Dubbed the Montauk Monster after the Long Island town where it was found, the creature has prompted speculation it was part of a secret mutant breeding program undertaken by the US Government. The Huffington Post has even given the creature its own blog. Meanwhile, gawker.com, which helped break the story, has sought to explain the phenomenon as a viral marketing stunt for a new US TV cartoon series.