Another rare 'sea monster' lands in California: a saber-toothed whale - CNN.com

Another rare 'sea monster' lands in California: a saber-toothed whale - CNN.com: Los Angeles (CNN) -- Oh, Jules Verne or Peter Benchley, where are you, great writers of deep-sea monsters?

For the second time this week, Southern California has seen a rare sea beast washed ashore, far from home waters.

This time, it's a saber-toothed whale, better known to live in deep Alaskan waters than in the warm surf of tourist-choked Venice Beach in Los Angeles where it stranded Wednesday.

In an extraordinary way even for scientists, the carcass of the nearly 15-foot and 2,000-pound whale was intact -- except for a couple of fresh bite marks from sharks. The whale, a female, apparently was barely alive when it came ashore -- a highly unusual sight because beached whales are often badly decomposed or badly eaten by marine life, a local biologist said.