This plesiosaur bone was found in Oxfordshire, and is about 146 million years old. The red colour is due to high levels of iron in the rocks. The fossil would have formed one of the four limbs of the strange creature. Plesiosaurs were marine reptiles that lived in shallow seas, they had four flippers and a long neck. They used their flippers both for swimming, and for dragging themselves onto land. Some people believe that the Loch Ness Monster is in-fact a plesiosaur. This however, is unlikely, as plesiosaurs died out in the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago, and no fossil plesiosaurs have been found younger than that. If they had survived since this time, they would surely have left fossil remains. Click here to see the drawing of a plesiosaur at the bottom of this page.

The fossil shows excellent cell structure, and is very well preserved.

A plesiosaur would have looked like this. And if you ask someone to draw the Loch Ness Monster, they would probably draw something similar.