Scotland's famous Loch Ness Monster has been not only a folklore legend but also an icon for the country, still bringing in tourists hoping to spot a glimpse of the elusive (and potentially non-existent) beast in the water.
Lucky for those folks, new research provides a key piece of evidence that makes the monster's existence all the more possible, meaning there's hope yet!
I'd be surprised if you didn't, seeing as it one of the world's most famous cryptids.
Legend has it that a sea-dragon-type creature is living in Scotland's Loch Ness. Nessie has been a common folklore figure for centuries now, with loads of people claiming to have seen it.
From a practical standpoint, it's just a myth, and no one's ever been able to get a clear photo of it despite how prevalent high-quality cameras are in this day in age.
From a scientific standpoint, it's unlikely because Loch Ness is a freshwater environment. Previously, Nessie has been compared to a plesiosaur in terms of visual similarity, and plesiosaurs only lived in saltwater.
A group of scientists at the University of Bath, University of Portsmouth, and Université Hassan II have discovered small plesiosaur fossils within a 100-million-year-old river system that used to run through what is now Morocco's Sahara Desert.
Which means a plesiosaur's survival in Scotland's Loch Ness is totally possible! The University of Bath even commented on it when sharing their findings, calling Nessie's existence 'plausible'.
They also wrote that the fossil record found "suggests that after almost a hundred and fifty million years, the last plesiosaurs finally died out at the same time as the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago."
Still, anything's possible! That's what I'll keep telling myself until the day we see Nessie for real, anyway.
h/t: LAD Bible
