This 2003 report features a springer spaniel named Tina and her owner, Gerald McSorley from Stirling.
The pair were walking alongside Loch Ness when Mr McSorley slipped and fell into shallow water.
He found a fossil, which he took to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where it was dated as being 150 million years old, the fossilised remains of four vertebrae from a prehistoric plesiosaur.
Mr McSorley believes the vertebrae are from the legendary loch-dweller: “The pictures I’ve seen [of Nessie] seem to fit the category. […] There’s too many people seen it for it not to be true.”
Dr Lyall Anderson, of the National Museum of Scotland, is not convinced. “I don’t think it belongs to Loch Ness,” he says. “The reason that I say that is that the type of rock that it’s in isn’t actually found in the immediate area of Loch Ness. There are very old crystalline rocks round there, but nothing 150 million years old.”
Even if it the find did not come from an actual Nessie, it might prove to have been good fortune for Mr McSorley, who was looking to sell the fossil to a collector.
www.nms.ac.uk/our_museums/national_museum.aspx
www.lochnessproject.org/loch_ness_reflections_news_links/loch_ness_fossil.htm
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/07/0729_030729_lochness.html
