American hunter David Bradt accidentally found the remains of a "relative" of the Loch Ness monster with an unusually short neck - Elasmosaurus, which lived about 70 million years ago. This is reported in an article in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
One of the authors of the article, Patrick Druckenmiller of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, said that representatives of this species of reptiles had up to 76 vertebrae. The found skeleton counted about 40 vertebrae, and this amazed specialists.
Druckenmiller noted that the remains of the sea lizard were found in November 2010 in northern Montana, when Bradt was hunting big game. Initially, the hunter assumed he had found a Triceratops skeleton, as they are often found in the northwestern United States.
It took three days to extract the remains from scientists, and only after that it was possible to understand that this is a new species of Elasmosaurus. Unlike other Elasmosaurs, the length of its neck is just over two meters. The reptile was named after a hunter and a tribe of local Indians - Nakonanectes bradti.
