NARRATOR: This is the island of Stronsay.
Located due north of Inverness, it's a quiet and peaceful
place for a seaside getaway.
But as zoologist Jeff Swinney will tell us,
on a summer day in 1808, visitors were
met with a terrifying sight.
JEFF SWINNEY: A fishing boat noticed something unusual.
Their attention was drawn to it by the screaming gulls that
gathered around this carcass, which had
been washed onto some rocks.
It was big.
It was smelly.
This was nothing like anything they'd seen before.
NARRATOR: The fisherman who had discovered
the carcass, a man by the name of John Peace,
approached it with a group of locals.
The island dwellers were familiar
with the occasional beach whale or a shark carcass that could
wash up on the Stronsay shores, but this was something very
different and very, very big.
JEFF SWINNEY: What they found on the beach
was an animal with a relatively small head,
only about a foot long, and then a body which extended 55 feet,
and they measured this, so we know that the measurement was
accurate, and about a quarter of the length of this appeared
to be neck, made up of vertebrae,
and then the rest of the vertebral column
going off tail.
There appeared to be three pairs of legs.
And the whole body was covered in what
appeared to be matted fur with a mane of fur
running down the back of the body.
This must have been an extraordinary sight.
Imagine, this is what they would have seen.
Must have been absolutely terrifying, disturbing,
this huge, 55-foot-long, mysterious,
six-legged, hairy animal just lying there on the beach.
These were not just a new species.
This was a new species of megafauna.
This was a big animal.
This was a sea monster.
NARRATOR: It was dubbed the Stronsay Beast.
And news of the discovery began to spread.
News spread fairly rapidly worldwide that this sea monster
had arrived on the shore.
They convened a sort of tribunal, two local justices
of the peace taking sworn affidavits
from the local people who had seen this animal.
The remains of the animal that are still in the museum
consists of three vertebrae.
I've had the opportunity of looking at the three vertebrae.
NARRATOR: After analyzing the remains,
Jeff concluded that the Stronsay Beast shared many similarities
with our potential profile of the Loch Ness Monster,
including a long narrow shape, flippers
on its abdomen, and of course, its massive size.
This is the first physical evidence of a possible Loch
Ness Monster type creature in Scotland, not a blurry photo
or a fleeting sighting, but actual remains
of a species that must have roamed the area's waters
at some point.
JEFF SWINNEY: There are myths, stories, legends associated
with many large bodies of water all over the world,
stories of unknown animals, Loch Ness in particular.
It would, of course, be really exciting
if we had some material evidence of a new animal,
a bit of megafauna, a large animal, a sea monster.
And until we have something to actually examine,
I keep an open mind.
NARRATOR: Could the Stronsay Beast actually
be the same species as the creature long identified
as the Loch Ness Monster?
The resemblance is uncanny, as is the timing.
In 1808, the year the Stronsay beast was discovered,
there were alleged sightings of similar creatures in Loch Ness,
and in Sweden's Storsjon Lake.
Is this just a coincidence, or were
several of these unknown animals migrating
through northern Europe?
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