The body of a two-headed dolphin has washed up on a beach in Turkey this week. The dolphin had two heads, but merged to share one tail.

The conjoined corpse was seen floating onto the shore in Izmir, on Turkey's west coast, Monday by teacher Tugrul Metin, according to a report in the Daily Mail.

The dead dolphin was believed to be a one-year-old calf that measured 3.2 feet in length.

"I noticed the dolphin in the sea and watched as it washed on to the beach," Metin, 39, told the Daily Mail. "I couldn't take it in at first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. I've never even heard about a dolphin like this let alone seen one with my own eyes."

"I was completely shocked," he added.

Metin called the police arrived and took the carcass to a laboratory for further investigation.

Early reports said the eyes on one of the dolphin heads were not properly opened and neither was one of the creature's two blow holes.

Associate professor Mehmet Gokoglu from the marine-biology department at the Ak Deniz University said he welcomed the opportunity to study the two-headed mammal, adding, "such a dolphin is a very rare occurrence, similar to the occurrence of conjoined human twins."

Last January, in what was believed to be the first discovery of its kind, conjoined twin gray whales were found dead in Mexico's Laguna Ojo de Liebre, also known as Scammon's Lagoon.

Scientists suspected the calves were miscarried because the carcass was only seven feet long, compared to the normal newborn gray whale size of 12 to 16 feet, according to a report by the Mirror.

Conjoined twins were known to have occurred in other whale species, including fin, sei and minke whales.

But an online search, as well as an inquiry to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, did not find any records of such abnormalities.