There is new evidence in the search for the Loch Ness Monster. A
fossil of a giant "sea monster" has been discovered on an Arctic
island. This doesn't explain how it might have gotten to
Scotland, but it does show that such creatures did once exist.
In BBC News, Paul Rincon quotes Paleontologist Angela Milner as
saying, "One hundred and fifty million years ago, Svalbard [the
island on which the fossils were discovered] was not so near the
North Pole, there was no ice cap and the climate was much warmer
than it is today." It appears to be a fossil of a plesiosaur,
which were a group of extinct reptiles that lived in oceans
during the age of the dinosaurs. Ricon quotes researcher Richard
Forrest as saying, "Even in classic fossil exposures such as you
have in Dorset [in England], there are cliffs eroding over many
years and every so often something pops up. But we haven't had
40 plesiosaurs from Dorset in 200 years." He quotes Norwegian
explorer Jorn Hurum as saying, "A large pliosaur was big enough
to pick up