New fossils uncovered in the Sahara Desert show that the plesiosaur, a dinosaur-era sea beast often pegged to be the Loch Ness monster, was able to live in freshwater.
Sightings of the Loch Ness monster have described it as a long-necked, aquatic reptile with a small head, similar to a plesiosaur.
Skeptics of the beast, also called “Nessie,” have argued that plesiosaurs only lived in ocean salt water.
The discoveries, made in Morocco by a team from the University of Bath, showed that plesiosaurs lived and fed in the fresh waters typically found in lakes.
In a press release from the English university, study co-author Nick Longrich asked rhetorically “Who’s to say that because we paleontologists have always called them ‘marine reptiles,’ they had to live in the sea?