The Anchor Point "lizard-like monster": a beached carcass hailed as a dinosaur and identified as a killer whale (1946)

Anchor Point sits on the eastern shore of Cook Inlet, on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, a few miles from Homer. In 1940 it had 20 residents. In early October 1946, a body came in from the sea. It was first seen floating in Kachemak Bay before landing at Anchor Point. Homesteaders said it lay there "for the better part of two weeks before anyone else noticed."

Monday, October 21, 1946. A Civil Aeronautics Administration radio operator passed on the tip, and the Anchorage Daily Times printed it. A "lizard-like monster" had washed ashore, nearly 20 feet long and three tons. Harry White of White Air Service flew over but could not land due to rough water. "I can't rightly describe it too well," he said, "but as much as anything it looks just like a big overgrown lizard."

The next day, pilot Bill Renfrew flew photographer Don Knudsen in. Knudsen measured the body at nearly 19 feet from the tip of its head to the tip of its tail, still partially covered in skin. The head was just over 2 feet wide and 3 1/2 feet long, with sharply pointed teeth that interlocked. For many onlookers, the teeth settled it. This was a land animal.

Most of the available small planes in Anchorage were hired for trips south. The seven major news services bid for Knudsen's photographs, and International News Service carried them to papers across the country. The Daily Times wrote that the animal was "believed to be a tyrannosaurus species of dinosaur." Many believed it had been frozen in ice, which explained the preserved skin.

Homesteaders E. S. Nordby and Jack Dietz put on gas masks, hauled the carcass to Dietz's farm and charged admission. They took in more than $50. Students from Homer came on a field trip. Souvenir hunters removed all of the teeth.

Some locals already knew. "Killer whale. Have seen many near my home," said Toby Anungazuk. Bush pilot Gren Collins agreed: "The bone structure is not that of a lizard which the prehistoric land animals were."

October 26. Anthropologist Ivar Skarland of the University of Alaska examined the remains. "It was just a killer whale, a little interesting but rather far from historic," he said. He pointed to the blowhole and to the lack of a pelvic region where back legs might have been attached. The missing tail, he thought, was possibly eaten by another killer whale. "There was still good red meat on the bones," he added.

He could see frowns and shaking heads. Many refused to believe him. Skarland stayed gracious, and made a prediction: "The story will probably grow, and in 10 years there'll be only a few people who will believe that it wasn't a monster."

In December 2024, columnist David Reamer revisited the case in the Anchorage Daily News. He set it beside other beached monsters that proved ordinary, from a 1935 British Columbia "serpent" that was just a basking shark to the Tasmanian Globster. What became of the carcass after Skarland's visit is not recorded.