Here's an interesting article from a paleontology conference last month in which it is asserted that the fossil specimans of plesiosaurs had long necks designed to reach down under water to catch food and that the structure would not allow for it to be held above water in the manner in which those advocating a remnent plesiosaur could appeal to.
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Why the Loch Ness Monster is no plesiosaur
02 November 2006
From New Scientist Print Edition.
(Image: Daniel Heuclin/NHPA)It has been described as a snake threaded through the body of a turtle, and some imaginative people think there's one living in Loch Ness.
The plesiosaur, a marine reptile that lived 160 million years ago, looked like nothing alive today, with a neck that was some 2 metres long, the length of the body and tail combined. Why it needed such a long neck has been a mystery, but now Leslie Noí¨ of the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge, UK, has an answer.
Plesiosaurs used their long necks to reach down and feed on soft-bodied animals living on the sea floor, Noí¨ told the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Ottawa, Canada, last month. He examined fossils of a plesiosaur called Muraenosaurus, and by calculating the articulation of the neck bones he concluded the neck was flexible and could move most easily when pointing down. "The neck was a feeding tube, collecting soft-bodied prey," he says. The small skulls of plesiosaurs couldn't cope with hard-shelled prey.
He also has some disappointing news. "The osteology of the neck makes it absolutely certain that the plesiosaur could not lift its head up swan-like out of the water," Noí¨ says, ruling the reptile out as a candidate for the Loch Ness monster.
From issue 2576 of New Scientist magazine, 02 November 2006, page 17