PHOTO COURTESY OF JASON BROWN | News-Review reader Jason Brown says he took this photo Tuesday while walking along Iron Pier beach in Northville.

It’s a bird! It’s a dead raccoon?

It’s a barbecued pig that’s been hit in the head with a rock?

That, or it’s another alleged “Montauk Monster” sighting!

This time in Northville.

The News-Review was contacted Tuesday by Jason Brown, a Riverhead High School student from Aquebogue who wrote he was “emailing some pictures I took today while walking down Iron Pier beach. The creature I found seems to resemble the Montauk Monster in a lot of ways.”

Asked Wednesday what he did with the creature, Mr. Brown replied, “As far as I know, this thing is still there at Iron Pier. I will check today when I go back down there.”

A News-Review reporter walked the entire length of the beach on both sides of the boat ramp Wednesday, but, alas, no monster. Mr. Brown said he found the creature about 3/4 of a mile west of the boat ramp.

“I would bet it’s a raccoon carcass,” said Kimberly Durham, the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation’s rescue program director. “ A close-up shot of the teeth would be helpful but the size and exterior appearance suggest non marine mammal.”

The original “Montauk Monster” was allegedly found in July 2008 at Ditch Plains Beach in Montauk by young women who photographed it and sent the pictures to the East Hampton Independent paper. Speculation ensued as to what the heck it was, and the Monster soon became an internet and media sensation, with national news outlets like CNN and Fox News Channel doing reports about it.

Some have speculated the beast in the photo — which looked like the “Northville Monster” but with a sort of beak — was a decaying raccoon, a dog, a capybara, a sea turtle, a hoax and even some speculated it washed up after a Plum Island experiment went awry.

Whatever it was, no one ever located the original again, though there have been subsequent reports of similar looking dead creatures turning up in other locations like Rocky Point and Mattituck, Missouri and Canada, according to the Monster’s official web site.

tgannon@timesreview.com