 The Classic Nessie 'Photo' — Not a Plesiosaur
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July 16, 2003 — A Scottish retiree has discovered a fossil of a 150-million-year-old reptile on the shores of Scotland's mythical Loch Ness, press reports said Wednesday.
Retired junkyard dealer Gerald McSorley, 67, said he "literally tripped over" the algae-covered fossil in shallow water near Loch Ness, Scotland's most famous inland body of water.
He took it to experts at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where the fossil was confirmed to be that of a plesiosaur, a long-necked sea reptile about 150 million years old.
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"I have always believed in the Loch Ness Monster, but this proves it for me. The resemblance between this and the sightings which have been made are so similar," McSorley told Scotland's The Daily Record newspaper.
The fossil shows four well-preserved vertebrae, complete with spinal cord and blood vessels, set in grey limestone.
"The plesiosaur is the image people have of the Loch Ness Monster," said paleontologist Lyall Anderson. "But Loch Ness is a glacially scoured trough created during the last Ice Age, which only finished about 12,000 years ago."
The plesiosaur, a meat-eating reptile that grew to about 35 feet (11 meters) in length, probably went out with the dinosaurs.
Stories of the Loch Ness monster, so enthusiastically promoted by the Scottish tourist industry, date back to the seventh century, when a water beast is said to have appeared before Saint Columba, the founder of Christianity in Scotland.
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