THE LOCH NESS MONSTER: IS IT A PLESIOSAUR?
The Loch Ness Monster: A prehistoric Beast or just a Hoax?
"The Surgeon's Photo", The Hoax image that reignited the story of the Loch Ness Monster
The loch ness monster is a cryptid (an animal/creature the existence of is not sure) that has been talked of since the 7th century AD, yet there are still "sightings" to this day! In this post we are going to discuss the loch ness monster, the "plesiosaur" said to inhabit a saltwater lake (or Loch in Scottish) in Scotland!
History Of Descriptions and Sightings
Since the 7th Century, when "Saint Columba's Life" was written there have been many rumors of a beast roaming Loch Ness, yet the creature described hasn't always been the same. The earliest descriptions of the creature come from 1888 when a man named Alexander Macdonald claimed to have seen a "large stubby legged animal" surface from the loch and propel itself 50 yards from where he was standing; he later added that it looked like a salamander. In 1933, Aldie Mackay claimed to have seen a "whale-like fish", which is not as descriptive as MacDonald's description yet it is nonetheless still important for our timeline.
One of the most important standpoints in this entire timeline is only 2 months after Mackay's description of the creature. This "sighting" by George Spicer was "Spicy" to say the least: Spicer claimed to have seen a limbless creature with a long neck "slightly thicker than that of an elephant's trunk" and a fat body. Later on Spicer admitted it was all made up. After that many people have claimed to have seen or even photographed the monster, with two of (in my opinion) most important descriptions coming from Arthur Grant and Robert Kenneth Wilson.
Arthur Grant's Plesiosaur
Arthur Grant, a motocyclist claimed to have nearly hit a creature with a long neck, small head and thick body when he was riding his bike near the loch at 1 AM. He said it was crossing the road at the time, and that when he got off his motorcycle it had already vanished. Zoologist Maurice Burton claimed that it could have been an otter based on what Grant described, but personally, I think we should take this story with a grain of salt.
"The Surgeon's Photograph"
Few months after Grant's Sighting a gynaecologist known as Robert Kenneth Wilson took this picture of "the creature" and published it in "The Daily Mail". The image became really popular and for the next 60 years people thought it was evidence of a plesiosaur lurking in the loch. However, it was later revealled that Wilson had attached the fake head seen in the photo to a toy submarine.
From then on all the sightings are controversial or just hoaxes, so we won't really pay much attention to each one of them. We will end off the timeline section with Drone Footage from August of 2021.
Drone Footage
In August of 2021 a outdoorsman named Richard Mavor explored the loch with a Drone and filmed two videos which he posted in September 1st. He claims to not have noticed the large moving figure until he posted them, but I think we should take this with a grain of salt, or two.
Could Nessie be a Plesiosaur?
(If it is real)
The Overall Description
According to the latest sightings of the creature, ranging from the mid-early 1930's, the loch ness monster is a semi-aquatic creature with flippers, a thick body, an elongated neck which can move in various directions (like that of a heron) and a small head. This description perfectly describes the most accurate reconstructions of plesiosaurs back then, with a heron-like neck, a stubby body, a pointy tail and small flippers. The problem with this is that our understanding of prehistoric life has changed since and now we have a very different image of the creatures: their bodies were more whale-like, their necks could not rotate as much and their tails were more paddle-like.
Cause Of Exinction
Plesiosaurs went extinct in the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, around 66 million years ago. The cause of their extinction is a chain reaction, starting from specific species of planktonic organisms going extinct to the entire ecosystem collapsing since plankton-feeding fish along with their predators were the main food source for plesiosaurs. This was rather not an immediate, since there are indeed few specimens of Plesiosaurids coming from the Paleocene era.
So the short answer is no, the loch ness monster is not a plesiosaur. not only do the descriptions of each not fit eachother, but the causes of the plesiosaurids's extinction are fatal enough to not let a single one survive.
Thank You For Reading!
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Bibliography and Sources
-Aggelos Mantos
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