[imagesource: Wilson / Keystone / Getty Images]

You’re looking at the most famous photo of ‘Nessie’, perhaps better known as the Loch Ness Monster.

Just the one problem – the 1934 photo, shared by Robert Wilson, was actually a toy submarine with a plastic head stuck on it.

So-called potential ‘sightings’ persist to this day but those with their heads screwed on have long given up hope that we will discover a prehistoric living creature lurking in the loch’s freshwater depths.

That doesn’t mean such an animal never lived there. In fact, the University of Bath has declared that Nessie’s existence is “plausible” after finding that some plesiosaurs may have lived in freshwater.

Over to the BBC:

Fossils of the prehistoric reptile were found in a 100 million-year-old river system in Morocco’s Sahara Desert. These suggest some species previously thought to be saltwater sea creatures, may have lived in freshwater systems..

Bones and teeth from 3m (10ft) long adults and an arm bone from a 1.5m (5ft) long baby were found on the Cretaceous age riverbed.

Image: Dr Nick Longrich

Dr Nick Longrich, from the university’s Milner Centre for Evolution, said: “We don’t really know why the plesiosaurs are in freshwater.

“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 freshwater.”

Plesiosaurs likely lived alongside frogs, crocodiles, turtles, fish, and Spinosaurus, an aquatic dinosaur.

There are a few issues to be addressed here.

For one, plesiosaurs (that’s an artist’s impression below right, dodging a larger predator) lived from the late Triassic Period into the late Cretaceous Period before being wiped out with the dinosaurs around 66 million years ago.

Image: Dr Nick Longrich

Loch Ness, south-west of Inverness, was formed during glacial processes in the Great Glen more than 10 000 years ago.

Links between Nessie and plesiosaurs go way, way back. Here’s The Telegraph:

Its link to the Loch Ness Monster was first made by Arthur Grant, a veterinary student, who claimed to have nearly hit the creature on his motorcycle in January 1934 and described it as a cross between a seal and plesiosaur. He drew a sketch that resembled the ancient sea creature.

Months later, Wilson’s photo was published and the hype kicked into overdrive.

To their credit, the same University of Bath press release that called the Loch Ness Monster ‘plausible’ also pointed out that plesiosaurs died out at the same time as the dinosaurs.

I think congrats are in order to the PR department that wrote the release because it’s sure grabbed a lot of headlines.

[sources:bbc&tele]