Lochness monster plausible, say scientists

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In Newsweek (!).

Loch Ness Monster Existence Plausible, Scientists Say

By Robyn White On 7/27/22

The existence of the mythical Loch Ness Monster is plausible, scientists said after making a new discovery.

Researchers from the the University of Bath and University of Portsmouth in the U.K., and Université Hassan II in Morocco, have found fossils of small plesiosaurs—an extinct, long-necked reptile—in what used to be an ancient river system.

The fossils were discovered in what is now Morocco's part of the Sahara Desert, however 100 million years ago it was a body of freshwater, according to the study published in Cretaceous Research.

The finding shows that the marine reptiles—once thought to be sea creatures—may have dwelled in freshwater habitats. The fossils found consist of bones and teeth from adult plesiosaurs measuring 9 feet long, and a bone from a baby, measuring 5 feet.

8-year old me would've eaten this up, but there are quite a few steps between "plesiosaurs could live in freshwater environments" and "plesiosaurs unchanged for millions of years live in Loch Ness."

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Yes, the article ends with:

While the findings suggest that the existence of the Loch Ness Monster is plausible, records also show that the beasts became extinct about 66 million years ago, at the same time as the dinosaurs.

Nevertheless, this shows a plesiosaur might have inhabited the Loch Ness. (If the Loch Ness was what it was 66 million years ago, I don't know that part.)

Maybe people have been perceiving something out of a time slip!

I think a lot of people would have liked there to have been a Loch Ness monster. But nowadays it exists mostly as a tourist marketing gimmick. I think there have been sufficient technical and scientific investigations over the years to sadly have removed all but the tiniest fraction of possibility of anything still existing there today.

One of the first which I was aware of was an investigation of a famous and iconic photo, published in the British Journal of Photography. By considering the position on the bank from which the photo was taken, what sort of camera and lens was used, they deduced that the photo was of something no larger than an otter. Incidentally that was published around the same time as the now generally accepted investigation of the famous Cottingley Fairies photographs in the same Journal.

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Nick Redfern at Mysterious Universe responds to this news by explaining why he thinks the "Loch Ness Monster" is a paranormal phenomenon, not a cryptoid, and that part of the pattern is not being able to take photographs.

By the time Holiday's book, The Great Orm of Loch Ness was published, Holiday had not only been to the lair of the Nessies on numerous occasions, he had also had the opportunity to speak to many witnesses to the beast. In doing so, he noticed a most curious, and even unsettling, pattern. There were far more than a random number of reports on record where eyewitnesses to the creatures had tried to photograph them, only to fail miserably. As time progressed, it became abundantly obvious to Holiday that this was not down to nothing stranger than chance. When an excited soul on the shore went to grab their camera, the beast would sink beneath the waves. When someone even just thought about taking a picture, the monster would vanish below. On other occasions, cameras would malfunction. Pictures would come out blank or fogged. It was as if the Nessies were dictating, and manipulating, the situations in which the witnesses found themselves. That is exactly what Holiday came to believe was going on.

Jul 29, 2022
Nick Redfern
About That New Nessie Story: Why I Still Say the Loch Ness Monsters are Paranormal