The Great Race of Yith

In Lovecraft's stories, beings known as The Great Race of Yith were an extraterrestrial species of peaceful investigators.

Their appearance is that of immense rough cones about three meters high, with the head and other organs arranged at the ends of a series of distensible limbs, about thirty centimeters thick, extending from their tops.

They spoke by clicking or clawing their enormous paws or claws, articulated at the end of two of their four limbs, and walked by the expansion and contraction of a viscous layer located at the bottom of their bases, which in turn had a diameter of almost three meters.

They have the ability to send their consciousness to the past or the future by usurping the body of some living being in order to learn their culture and then return to their time to record everything learned in archives that are kept in the library of their city called Pnakotus.

I think it is normal to imagine extraterrestrials with humanoid characteristics because we relate intelligence, engineering and science to our appearance.