A BLOB-LIKE substance that mystified scientists when it washed up on Bermuda's beaches more than 30 years ago was last month identified as mere whale blubber.

The origins of the gelatinous product had plagued academics and lay-persons since it was first discovered on a beach near St. Augustine, Florida, in 1896.

The discovery, described as "a gigantic lump of white, rubbery flesh, 21 feet long, seven feet wide and weighing perhaps seven tons" baffled local doctors, naturalists, journalists and photographers who all believed they were able to discern the remains of a head, eyes, mouth, tentacles and a tail in the mess.

"When living, it must have had enormous arms, each one a hundred feet or more in length, each as thick as the mast of a large vessel, and armed with hundreds of saucer-shaped suckers, the largest of which would have been at least a foot in diameter," pronounced Dr. Addison Verrill of Yale, at the time of the St. Augustine discovery, America's foremost expert on cephalopods. He even granted the substance a scientific name ? Octopus gignateus.

In later years, blobs continued to appear on beaches around the world including Tasmania, New Zealand, Nantucket, Newfoundland and Bermuda, the reported yesterday. The mystery became legend, with warnings issued that the blobs were remnants of living fossils more fearsome than dinosaurs.

In 1972, one analyst suggested the blobs might be the decomposing body of a giant alien from outer space.

And after a blob as "long as a school bus" was found in Chile last summer, experts "oohed and aahed over what appeared to be fragments of its huge tentacles, the Internet buzzed over news of the monster and the BBC pronounced it perhaps the remains of a lost species of giant octopus. Other experts suggested it was a giant squid or perhaps an entirely new kind of sea creature unknown to science," the said.

Samples from the St. Augustine blob sent to what later became the Smithsonian Museum, had languished for decades. In 1971 a cell biologist at the University of Florida, Dr. Joseph C. Gennaro Jr., examined the specimens and declared them to be part of a true ogre.

"The sample was not whale blubber," he wrote in an article, The Creature Revealed. "The evidence appears unmistakable that the St. Augustine sea monster was in fact an octopus, the implications are fantastic."

Apparently, his conclusions were not widely accepted.

A more accurate portrayal of the substance was delivered via The Biological Bulletin ? published by the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts ? last month.

According to the Times, a University of Maryland scientist, Dr. Sidney K. Pierce, obtained samples of both the St. Augustine and the Bermuda blobs about a decade ago.

In 1995, he and his colleagues denounced the possibility that the Octopus giganteus might exist, expressing "profound sadness at ruining a favourite legend" in the April issue of The Biological Bulletin.

At that time however, their conclusions came under criticism from Richard Ellis, author of Monsters of the Sea. Published in 1994, the book explores some of the world's most bizarre fauna. According to Mr. Ellis, the scientists' findings raised more questions than they answered.

Dr. Pierce went back to work. With the assistance of experts from Indiana University, the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and the University of Maryland, he was able to examine "the specimens with a new battery of microscopes, chemical tests and, for the first time, DNA technology that, even more than fingerprints, can cast powerful light on issues of identity".

Dr. Pierce and his five colleagues determined the blobs to be made "of almost pure collagen, the fibrous protein found in connective tissue, bone and cartilage", the reported. "The scientists concluded that it had not come from giant squids or octopuses or any other kind of mysterious invertebrates. Rather, the Bermuda blob arose from a fish or a shark, and the St. Augustine one from a whale."

"The results," wrote Dr. Pierce ? now at the University of South Florida ? and his colleagues, "unequivocally demonstrate that the Chilean blob and all the rest of the mysterious finds are simply deteriorating whale blubber, in particular, collagen matrix that holds it together. It is clear that all these blobs of popular and cryptozoological interest are, in fact, the decomposed remains of large cetaceans.

"To our disappointment, we have not found any evidence that any of the blobs are the remains of gigantic octopods, or sea monsters of unknown species."

This time the findings were accepted without resistance. According to the , even Mr. Ellis conceded defeat: "I'm crushed," he reportedly said. "It's a blow for people who continue to want there to be great and scary monsters out there."