An unlikely beachgoer arrived on the shore of Venice Beach Tuesday: a Sabre-toothed whale.

"...scientists are just as excited about this because it's a rare opportunity to study the natural history of these kinds of animals that are so rarely observed, even by marine specialists," Jim Dines from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles told CNN.

When the body of the rare female Sabre-toothed whale, also known as the Stejneger's beaked whale, washed ashore, experts reacted quickly.

"We were very lucky," Nick Fash, an education specialist at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium, told Los Angeles Times. "These whales are incredibly rare and almost never seen in the wild."

The carcass was about 15 feet long and 2,000 pounds. A crew came immediately from the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum to retrieve it. On Wednesday, the body was taken for a necropsy which will give scientists more information about the creature's death and diet. Its skeleton will be used for research and exhibition at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.

Sabre-toothed whale bodies that wash ashore are one of the only ways scientists gather data about the mammal because it is so rare.

According to Fash, the whale's body was in good condition and it was probably alive when it first washed up. Its body was marked with bites from cookie-cutter sharks, which munch on large circles of flesh from bigger animals.

Sabre-toothed whales eat small deep-water fish and cephalods, like squid. It gets its name from its teeth which are shaped like tusks and stick out from its bottom jaw. The signature teeth are not visible in females or young Sabre-toothed whales, however; instead, the teeth are underneath the whales' gum tissue.

It is unknown what the whale was doing near Venice Beach. Sabre-toothed whales live in subarctic waters and are believed to migrate south near Northern California.

Three days earlier, a giant oarfish was discovered off the Los Angeles coast. The proximity of the events has some wondering if this could be the result of global warming.

"It's too early to tell," Dine said. "If we were to see a whole bunch of these animal strandings, that would give more evidence of something going on."

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