Loch Ness Monster-Like Giant Reptile, Discovered In Antarctica
There’s a team of Argentine paleontologists that managed to discover a huge reptile in Antarctica. It’s looking similar to the Loch Ness monster and the huge Elasmosaurid from Antarctica is the largest one of its species that has been ever found.
The Argentine Antarctic Insitute was the one that conducted the research, and the paleontologist Jose O’Gorman of the Museum of La Plata (MLP) and CONICET said that this discovery is definitely a huge one.
The giant reptile resembles the Loch Ness monster and it lived around the end of the Cretaceous era.
In other words, this Elasmosaurid is also the closest one to the period of dinosaur extinction. And, as we already said, it’s the biggest of its species that has ever been found so far.
It’s also worth noting that the work of the Argentine Antarctic Institute took several years, and the scientists extracted the specimen back in 2017.
“Due to the large size of this specimen, its rescue was carried out during successive campaigns of the Argentine Antarctic Institute, and its rescue culminated in 2017,” according to the study’s leading author in the Cretaceous Research journal.
Eating habits are to blame for its look
It was also discovered that the giant reptile developed some pretty unique eating strategies that helped it grow so much.
“It weighed between 10 and 13 tons, so it is well above those [Elasmosaurids] that were known until now, which had a mass of between five and six tons,” Dr. O’Gorman also said.
This is the reptile species that inspired people to create the myth of the famous Loch Ness monster. It was also discovered that the reptile used to swim with its mouth open to swallow fish.
The fossils of the reptile were found back in 1989, but the whole specimen was recovered only two years ago.
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