Move over, Nessie– there’s a new monster in town. This week, researchers in Scotland unveiled the fossilized skeleton of “the Storr Lochs Monster”– a Jurassic–era predator known as an ichthyosaur that roamed the oceans 170 million years ago. It’s the most complete skeleton of a prehistoric sea reptile ever found in Scotland and is being hailed as the “crown jewel” of Scottish fossils. The story of the skeleton’s discovery begins in 1966 on the Isle of Skye, when an amateur fossil hunter named Norrie Gillies came upon the rock–embedded bones while walking the beach near the SSE Storr Lochs Power Station he managed. “They were sticking out of the rock in the tidal zone, so they would have been covered by water much of the day,” Dr. Stephen Brusatte, of the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences, told FoxNews.com. “The bones are chocolate brown and [would have stood] out from the much paler–colored rock.” Read more http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/09/07/skeleton-prehistoric-sea-monster-found-in-scotland.html
