A new find of a short-necked ancestor shows it was not long before the species added vertebrae to end up with Elasmosaurus, whose neck was five times the length of its trunk.
A species associated with the Loch Ness Monster gained long necks over a 'relatively' short space of time millions of years ago, researchers say. Some people believe Nessie is a plesiosaurs or a descendant of the ancient animal which had a small head and long neck and became extinct 65.5 million years ago.
The animals originated in the Early Triassic, four million years after the end-Permian mass extinction wiped out around 90 per cent of Earth's species and during a time of rapid change following the disaster. Dr Qi-Ling Liu, who led the project said: "We were lucky enough to find two complete skeletons of this new beast. It's small, less than half a metre long, but this was close to the ancestry of the important group of marine reptiles called Sauropterygia.
"We think, as small predators, they were probably mainly feeding on shrimps and small fish, so their ability to sneak up on a small shoal, and then hover in the water, darting their head after the fast-swimming prey was a great survival tool. "The Early Triassic was a time of recovery and marine reptiles evolved very fast at that time, most of them predators on the shrimps, fishes and other sea creatures. They had originated right after the extinction, so we know their rates of change were extremely rapid in the new world after the crisis."
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