A mysterious giant 'hairy sea monster' has been washed up on the eastern coast of Russia.

Locals have failed to identify the 'strange creature' and are appealing to scientists to name the 'baffling behemoth'.

A video shows the hulking 'smelly' carcass found on the Pacific coastline of the Kamchatka peninsula close to the remote village of Pakhachi.

The ugly chalk-coloured beast - reported to be larger than three men - appears to have a tail or long tentacle, and tube-like hair or fur.

Witness Svetlana Dyadenko, above, said: 'The most interesting thing to me is that the creature is covered with tubular fur'

It has 'no definite head or eyes' and was too heavy for locals to move, according to The Siberian Times.

Speculation has ranged from a bizarre primeval relic from the deep, to an extinct woolly mammoth released from an undersea permafrost grave by the warm summer.

Witness Svetlana Dyadenko posted: 'The most interesting thing to me is that the creature is covered with tubular fur.

'Could it be some ancient creature? I wish scientists could inspect this enigma that ocean threw at us.'

After inspecting the 'stinking' monster, she likened it to a vast 'hairy octopus'.

Dyadenko added: 'It does look like fur, but it's tubular, as if a lot of tiny pipes hang down the carcass. [It's] a really strange-looking creature.

'We googled it and couldn't find anything resembling it.'

Svetlana reported that locals were unable to either dig or pull it out.

'You would need an excavator because part of it got completely covered with sand,' she added.

One theory is that the beast could be a 'globster', a term coined in 1962 to describe a mysterious carcass washed up in Tasmania

One puzzled onlooker said: 'I wonder if it came from a thawed glacier?'

Another woman replied: 'It's got to have been brought from the Arctic.'

One theory is that the beast could be a 'globster', a term coined in 1962 to describe a mysterious carcass washed up in Tasmania.

Globsters may at first resemble a gigantic octopus while others may have some bones or tentacles or flippers - or even eyes - but they are not usually hairy.

Russian marine scientist Sergei Kornev, from the Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography, said he believes the 'Kamchatka monster' is part of a whale

Many are believed to be the remnants of whales or sharks or other sea creatures that have decayed over time, and taken on bizarre shapes.

Russian marine scientist Sergei Kornev, from the Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography, said he believes the Kamchatka monster is part of a whale.

'Under the influence of the sea, time and various animals, from the smallest to the largest, a whale often takes on bizarre forms,' he said.

'This is only a part of a whale, not a whole one,' he claimed.