In the USA accidentally discovered a unique find

American accidentally found the remains of a “cousin” of the Loch ness monster.

American hunter accidentally discovered in the mountains of Montana, the remains of unusual marine lizard that lived in the seas in the place of modern North America about 70 million years ago.

On the finding reported in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

As the researchers note, to extract from the earth the remains of the animal, it took three days. Then it appeared that the creature lived not on land but in water and is a new species of elasmosaurs long – necked marine reptiles that inhabited the oceans of the world during the Cretaceous period.

Despite their belonging to the elasmosaurs, the neck findings were short – its length was just a little over two meters. A small number of vertebrae of this reptile, named Nakonanectes bradti surprised scientists because it indicates that in the seas of the Cretaceous period, there was elasmosaurs as short and long neck.

This contradicts notions about their evolution, as scientists believed that the ancestors of these prototypes Loch ness monster had a short neck, which gradually increased in length as the adaptation of elasmosaurs and their relatives from among the plesiosaurs to their habitat.

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According to the researchers, the discovery shows that elasmosaurs could occupy different ecological niches, which testifies to their prosperity shortly before the end of the age of dinosaurs, and that their evolution can proceed in different ways under the action of radically different conditions of the environment in which their ancestors lived.

paradox