Nessie could have existed but only 66 million years ago, say scientists
Prehistoric fossil find gives weight to theory that Loch Ness monster was suited to fresh water systems
THE existence of a Loch Ness monster is “plausible”, academics have declared after finding that some plesiosaurs may have lived in fresh water.
Those who firmly believe in Nessie have long argued that the creature of Scottish folklore could be a prehistoric reptile, with grainy images and witness accounts over the years suggesting the existence of a beast with a long neck and small head similar to a plesiosaur.
However, sceptics argue that even if a plesiosaur lineage had survived into the modern era, the creatures could not have lived in Loch Ness because they needed a saltwater environment.
Now, the University of Bath has found fossils of small plesiosaurs in a 100 million year old river system in Morocco’s Sahara Desert, suggesting they did live in fresh water.
The fossils include bones and teeth from a 9ft 10in-long adult, and an arm bone from a 5ft juvenile.
The discovery suggests these creatures lived and fed in fresh water, alongside frogs, crocodiles, turtles, fish, and the huge aquatic dinosaur spinosaurus.
“What amazes me is that the ancient Moroccan river contained so many carnivores all living alongside each other,” said co-author Dave Martill, a professor of palaeobiology at Bath University. “This was no place to go for a swim.”
The plesiosaur teeth show the same heavy wear patterns of the spinosaurus, suggesting that they were regularly feeding on the same heavily armoured fish that swam in the river system, rather than simply being occasional visitors.
Dr Nick Longrich, corresponding author on the paper, said: “We don’t really know why the plesiosaurs are in fresh water.
“It’s a bit controversial, but who’s to say that because we palaeontologists have always called them ‘marine reptiles’, they had to live in the sea? Lots of marine lineages invaded fresh water.”
The first complete skeleton of a plesiosaur was first found in Lyme Regis, Dorset, in 1823 by Mary Anning, an English fossil hunter.
The creature had a small head, long neck and four flippers. It was named “near lizard” because it more closely resembled modern reptiles, compared with the ichthyosaurus, which had been found in the same rock strata just a few years earlier.
It swam by flapping its fins in the water, much as sea lions do today and lived from the late Triassic period into the late Cretaceous period, about 215million to 66million years ago, before being wiped out with the dinosaurs.
Its link to the Loch Ness Monster was first made in January 1934 by Arthur Grant, a veterinary student who claimed to have nearly hit the creature on his motorcycle.
He made a sketch of the animal and described it as a cross between a seal and plesiosaur.
Just a few months later, the Daily Mail published a photograph taken by Robert Kenneth Wilson, a gynaecologist, which also appeared to show a creature with a long neck and small head moving through the water.
The image, which became widely known as “the surgeon’s photograph” later turned out to be a hoax.
It was created by a disgruntled former Daily Mail employee who was angry that his father-in-law had been ridiculed by the newspaper for claiming he had found Nessie’s footprints.
A statement from the University of Bath said the discovery showed the Loch Ness Monster was “on one level, plausible”.
“Plesiosaurs weren’t confined to the seas, they did inhabit fresh water,” it said, adding that the fossil record still showed that plesiosaurs died out at the same time as the dinosaurs, 66million years ago.
The research paper is yet to be peer reviewed.
Nessie lives. Or rather he may have lived once in one of the country’s deepest lakes. Fossils of plesiosaurs have been found in a 100 million-year-old river system in Morocco’s Sahara Desert. The importance of this discovery for the existence of the Loch Ness Monster is that it proves the prehistoric reptiles survived in fresh water and did not need a salt water environment as those of a sceptical bent have long maintained in order to debunk the monster myth. True believers have always thought the monster is a plesiosaur left over from the Mesozoic era that survived the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66million years ago. Academics have somewhat fancifully extrapolated from these desert findings that the existence of Nessie is “on one level, plausible”. And there we all were thinking it was just a hoax.