Loch Ness Monster-Like Creature's Bones Found

UPDATED: 1:44 pm MST December 11, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The bones of an ancient creature that would've looked like the Loch Ness Monster have turned up on an island in the Antarctic.

Amid 70-mph winds and freezing Antarctic conditions, an American-Argentine research team recovered the well-preserved fossil skeleton of the juvenile plesiosaur. It was too heavy to be carried out and had to be moved by helicopter. The plesiosaur is a marine reptile that swam the waters of the Southern Ocean roughly 70 million years ago, according to the National Science Foundation.

The fossil skeleton of the baby plesiosaur is one of the most complete of its type ever found and is thought to be the best-articulated fossil skeleton ever recovered from Antarctica. It was in an area covered in volcanic ash, leading researchers to speculate it might've been killed during an eruption.

Plesiosaurs lived for millions of years in the southern ocean around Antarctica, which, back then, was warm. Adults could be more than 30 feet long, and the creatures had fins with which they could move through the water much the way penguins do.

The National Science Foundation said the long-necked, diamond-finned plesiosaurs are very familiar as the legendary inhabitants of Scotland's Loch Ness, although scientific evidence indicates the marine carnivores have been extinct for millions of years. But when the creatures were alive, their paddle-like fins would have allowed them to "fly through the water" in a motion very similar to modern-day penguins, according to a press release.

The specimen was discovered to be the 5-foot-long skeleton of a long-necked plesiosaur, the foundation said. An adult plesiosaur could reach more than 32 feet in length. Most of the bones of the infant plesiosaur had not developed distinct ends due to the youth of the specimen, said James E. Martin, curator of vertebrate paleontology and coordinator of the paleontology program at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology's Museum of Geology.

He said the animal's stomach area was spectacularly preserved. Stomach ribs span the abdomen, and rather than being long, straight bones like those of most plesiosaurs, these are forked, sometimes into three prongs, he said.

Several small, rounded stomach stones are concentrated within the abdominal cavity, indicating stomach stones were ingested even by juvenile plesiosaurs to help maintain buoyancy or to aid digestion, the release said.

The skeleton is nearly perfectly articulated as it would have been in life, but the skull has eroded away from the body. Extreme weather at the excavation site on Vega Island off the Antarctic Peninsula and lack of field time prevented further exploration for the eroded skull.

Leaders of the 2005 expedition that recovered the plesiosaur were Martin, Judd Case of Eastern Washington University and Marcelo Reguero of the Museo de La Plata, Argentina.

The skeleton goes on display Wednesday at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology's Museum of Geology.