ETA: Missed edit window, the second “not” was quite obviously a typo.
It could be both squid and whale. Giant squids sometimes attack and kill whales. Maybe both predator and prey died.
1/ It’s 50 feet long. Whales are the only animal that long. QED. End of discussion. This single feature is so fundamental that unless the carcass fell apart into small pieces, it immediately indicates it’s a whale. So the carcass would have to be in a fundamentally different state for it not to be identifiable.
2/ It has a spine. It’s a vertebrate. It’s therefore not some giant squid at least three times bigger than any previously observed giant squid.
3/ It has baleen, FFS. Only whales have baleen.
4/ It has those groove things in its skin that whales have.
So it wasn’t even close to being unidentifiable as a whale. It had multiple obvious features of a whale.
Someone needs to poke it with a stick. If it opens it’s eyes and say’s, “what the f**k do you think you’re doing!?!”, run away…it’s just my slumbering ex-wife.