© Scotsman.comThe now familiar image of the Loch Ness Monster.
Scientists at Edinburgh University discovered the new species last week, the ancient bones of the creature were found in a clay pit near Peterborough over 100 years ago. The new evidence suggests that the creature is distantly related to the modern day crocodile.
Adrian Shine from the Loch Ness Centre and Exhibition has spent around forty years studying the Loch, and believes that the newly discovered prehistoric predator could fit in with sightings of the famed Loch Ness monster.
He said: "Of course, it does not fit the popular stereotype of the iconic long-necked plesiosaur that turned people on, but we could enter a whole new debate".
Nessie came to the public's attention in the 1930s. Perhaps the most famous picture of Nessie was taken by Robert Kenneth Wilson in 1934. It showed a long necked creature, poking out of the water. That image has become synonymous with Loch Ness and is the most common theory on how Nessie might look.
© Scotsman.com
One recorded sighting that fits the new description dates back to February 1932. The report says that a Miss K MacDonald spotted what she described as a "crocodile-like" creature making its way up the river towards Loch Ness.
Seals, birds, trees, submarines and crocodiles among other wild and wonderful theories have been credited with being the truth behind the myth.
However, suggestions of a link between this new blood-biting predator to Loch Ness have been discounted by a leading authority on dinosaurs.
Angela Milner is a retired research associate with the Natural History Museum, she said: "Crocodiles do not like our climate. We're talking about things that have been perhaps seen in Loch Ness - no way could a crocodile survive."
People needs to grow up and realize the truth. If there is a nessie it doesn't spend it's time in Loch Ness much. There's miles and miles of water flowing beneath the crust or should I say in it. Where do you think well water comes from. Underwater water.There could be oceans and rivers under-ground holding ancestors of prehistoric creatures. Both the flying and the swimming type. If we have a nessie or a bessie reported by someone it would mean that a quake or a plate shift caused a creature that lives within the earth to accidentally come to the surface. As little such creatures are supposedly seen would lead one to believe that they die when that happens though. Continental plates move over other continental plates createing worlds in which they could have survived. Picture a desert plate getting pushed a mountain range plate. Think of all of that space it would leave for survival of the fitest which adapted. Thus even pterosaurs could have survived. Such creatures which adapted to such conditions would not survive up here though. Deep within the ocean creatures have adapted to liveing at the vents of volcanoes so it's possible other creatures adapted to under-ground worlds as well. To adapt to one condition makes it unable to take it's old conditions though. And further prehistoric creastures hade different conditions then we have now which means they probably couldn't adapt as well to modern conditions. Their conditions might had been either to adapt from where they were then to here. So don't expect to see a nessie very often. They wouldn't be able to survive up here in our world long. Loch Ness is too cold nessie. She'd be used to heat if she came from within the earth.