Lochness monster?

Sometimes my friends amaze me. I have this one, a modest young man, who suddenly pulled out of his pocket two objects and asked us if we could identify them.
Well to me they looked like bits of stone but M recognized them as fossils.


Then he tells us the story behind them.
He found them on Flodigarry beach on the Isle of Skye also known as Scotland’s Jurassic island.

At that point he dropped his bombshell: they could be the vertebrae of the Lochness monster!
Well lets be more specific if the Lochness monster ever existed its likely to have been a marine reptile, most likely the
Pleisiosaur which existed at least 60 million years ago

So he took them along to the Hunterian museum in Glasgow and they agreed that the fossils could belong to this prehistoric reptile and they wanted it for their collection but he is unwilling to part with it.
After I photographed them he popped them back into his pocket. ( Such a cavalier attitude would cause most museum curators to faint on the spot).

The Isle of Skye is a popular hunting ground for fossil hunters and it even has its own museum.

There is a vocal minority who believe the Lochness monster still exists today.
Whether it does or not, it’s certainly good for the tourist trade.