It looks like some sort of animal, with the 14K stamped inside the body of the animal. Maybe a burro or llama? But I haven't found any maker's marks with that design.
To me the necklace looks like a hybrid: the eggy freshwater pearls (with a very ordinary clasp and no gimp/French wire used to cover the thread where it connects to the clasp, which would normally be used in fine necklaces) being one part and the elaborate gold and diamonds section with the large drop and the round pearls being the second part. I wonder if the gold and diamonds section was not original to the rest of the necklace-- maybe it was originally part of something else? Although they look beautiful together, the two sections don't really seem on a par with each other in quality.
I can only say that if I were designing the piece, I would want to pair the gold and diamonds section with rounder pearls, and use a fancier clasp, so that the necklace would look more uniform in quality. But I did not design it, so maybe it really was this way originally.
It would be interesting to have the gold and diamonds section x-rayed to see if there are beads inside the pearls. Do you have a friendly dentist who might do that?