Palentologists have found the remains of a plesiosaur, the aquatic monster that is most
associated with the Loch Ness monster.
The specimen broke a record for body size and was found in antartica, and its being
called the worlds heaviest sea monster, and I bet blue whales are super jealous right
now.
Welcome back to informoverload we do the news and spill the tea and loch the ness.
I’m charlotte dobre and on this channel, we’ve been keeping you up to date with the
loch ness monster.
I’ve always been obsessed with the loch ness monster and I think its because I used
to watch happy ness as a kid.
Do you guys remember happy ness?
The 90s childrens cartoon?
Man I loved that shit.
I was obsessed with the idea that the loch ness monster could exist, but guess what?
It did exist.
It was a type of plesiosaur.
The plesiosaur is a marine reptile with four flippers that lived millions of years ago.
Elasmosaurs, one of the largest pleisosaurs, the ones with the long necks, are the sea
monsters that most people think could be the loch ness monster.
Researchers from the Argentine ANtartic institute published an article in the journal Cretaceous
research that provides details about the largest elasmosaur ever found.
This specimen is 36 feet long from snout to tail, which for some perspective is about
as long as a telephone pole.
It is the largest elasmosaiurid ever found, weighing at almost 15 tons when it was alive.
The specimen has been nicknamed Nessie, which is quite appropriate if you ask me.
It turns out that elasmosaurs were pretty common in antartica back in the day.
The fact that this specimen was so large means that it probably ate a lot, which isn’t
surprising when you consider the large mammals like humpback whales that currently exist
in antartica during feeding and breeding seasons.
Pleisosaurs swam around with their mouths open , collecting and swallowing fish.
Kinda sounds like a whale if you ask me.
This specific fossil was so big, that it actually took 3 trips to fully extract.
It was first discovered back in 1989 by William Zinsmeister from Purdue University.
Zinsmeister came across the fossils near the antartic peninsula, but he didn’t have the
funding to dig further into the rock to Extract it.
then researchers went back in 2005, then 2012, and again in 2017.
I mean this is antartica we are talking about, excavations were really difficult because
of harsh weather, and the fossil was located in a remote area.
Snow storms prevented excavations from taking place, but thankfully, fossils usually stay
in one place.
Hint, they’re dead.
So it was still there even 20 years later.
In total, scientists collected 1760 pounds of fossilized bones that were embedded within
rocks on Antartica’s Seymour island.
In addition to being the largest fossil of its kind ever found, its also one of the most
complete.
They have pretty much everything except the skull which is like who needs skulls anyway.
The fossils were hidden in the Lopez de Bertodano Formation, 7.5 feet below the geologic line
that shows the Cretaceous Paleogene extinction.
The cretaceous paleogene extinction was 66 million years ago when a 6 mile long asteroid
collided with earth.
This particular plesiosaur probably lived about 30 thousand years before the mass extinction,
making the fossils 70 million years old.
If this particular elasmosaur was as humungous as it was, it means that elasmosaurs were
thriving before the mass extinction.
Who knows, maybe some of them even survived until, relatively modern day, which is why
there are so many legends and myths about sea monsters, one of them being the loch ness
monster.
Elasmosaurs were terrestrial, air breathing dinosaurs, that are believed oto have been
warm blooded.
That means that elasmosaurs had to poke their heads out of the water every few seconds,
which could have explained a lot of the sightings over history.
We did a recent video about scientists who went to the loch and are reporting that it
may actually exist, if you wanna watch that, its clickable on your screen right now.
Okay kids, its about that time, comment time.
ARE U READY.
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Jesus, now I cant say aint?
AINT AINT AINT.
Some of you are sooo sensitive.
The only time I cringe at anything is when someone is doing something totally and completely
embarrassing.
Like fergie singing the US national anthem.
THAT is cringeworthy, not me saying aint.
Settle down.
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