The University of Alaska Museum of the North announced about the discovery of a marine reptile fossil in the Talkeetna Mountains. The discovered fossil is of a rare species of plesiosaur in Alaska. Upon assessment, the fossil was identified as elasmosaur.

Curvin Metzler, a fossil collector, was the one who discovered the fossil. Researchers have explained that the plesiosaurs belonged to a group of marine reptiles that lived in the ancient oceans and seas in the Mesozoic period over 200 million years ago.

There were two morphological types of plesiosaurs- one of them were known as plesiosauromorph and the other one were known as pliosauromorph. The recently discovered species belonged to the latter group and its name is elasmosaurus.

The species is having a very long neck, around 14 meters in length and weighed more than 2,000 kilograms. These specifications made it one of the largest and heaviest plesiosaurs. Researcher Patrick Druckenmiller from the University of Alaska Museum of the North said that the creature looked like the mythical Loch Ness monster.

The species lived during the late Cretaceous period, over 70 million years ago. Researchers said that it is the first plesiosaur discovered in the region, but is the first one to be ever found in Alaska. "I was really excited the first time Curvin showed me one of its bones. I recognized it as a vertebra from the base of the animal's neck and wanted to visit the site to see if we could find more", affirmed Druckenmiller.