Michael Dunford (6:12)
I'd be lying if I said I was some kind of rock star of paleontology. I was published, of course, and my students seemed to like me. But marine reptiles weren't on the cutting edge, especially my specialized focus on the plesiosaur, though this huge creature's remains had been found all over the world, and everything about them fascinated me endlessly. Let's face it, they just weren't as sexy as T. Rexes. So I bowed my time, wrote my papers, taught my classes, and prayed for tenure. Which never seemed to come. At some point, I must have fallen asleep in my seat as I suddenly found myself alive and breathing in the Jurassic era. I should say that when I dream, I dream. The thick humidity felt like I was there. In the distance, something roared. To anyone else, it would have been terrifying. But I wasn't scared. No, I knew that this was exactly where I was supposed to be. So I waded deep into the dense foliage until I found an endless sprawl of turquoise sea. The view was so breathtaking that I didn't even notice that everything around me had gone completely silent. Then I saw why. Distant ripples disturbed the waterline. Something was approaching, something huge. But I held my ground, dug my feet deep into the sand as a shadow grew below the surface. I knew, instinctually knew in my bones, that this was a plesiosaur. But I didn't dare move. I wanted to see it. Had to see it. And just as the water began to part, revealing a brilliant flash of green skin, I woke up. The flight attendant was tapping my shoulder. We'd arrived in Scotland. Two armed soldiers flanked a man waiting on the tarmac. This, I soon learned, was Admiral Marcus Wilson, the same guy who'd woken me up some nine hours before. He ushered me to a military helicopter, and only after I managed to get the bulky headset on could I ask where we were going. In reply, the pilot's voice blared in my ear. 20 minutes to Loch Ness. Of course, I was familiar with the place, mainly because whenever something popped up in the tabloids about a prehistoric giant lurking in the deep, we'd pass it around the office and get a good laugh. But Wilson and the soldiers weren't laughing, not one bit. And look, we never meant to discount the fun in imagining the unknown hell. That mysterious allure even led me down a drunken rabbit hole. One night in grad school, where I read everything I possibly could about Loch Ness, I found the graphic account of a water beast that was written in the 6th century and the news article that first declared the creature a monster in 1933. I even stared for far too long at the famous surgeon's photograph that looked remarkably like a brontosaurus head protruding from the waves. But that brontosaurus turned out to be less than 2ft tall and the photo was debunked as a fake. Same for the dozens of copycats that followed over the decades. An endless parade of suspicious looking boat wakes, overactive imaginations, and even a large catfish or two. But I could have guaranteed you that Loch Ness held no dinosaur sized monster. That is, until Wilson finally spoke. We captured it 10 hours ago. I thought I'd misheard him. Surely he'd meant they found it, or discovered or even recovered. Of course he was referring to a fossil, or even a remarkably preserved specimen trapped in some one in a million Scottish peat bog. But Wilson continued. Two days earlier, a research vessel discovered an anomaly at the bottom of the lock. An inexplicably powerful source of energy, he said. Almost like some kind of volcanic fissure had opened up in the lakebed. I barely even registered what he was telling me. All I could focus on was what he meant by captured. But Wilson just pointed out at the vast sprawl of water coming into view. It was the lock, all right. An endless line of black flanked by rugged hills. I suppose that any other day I would have called it scenic, but today, with the military vehicles blocking the surrounding roads below, it struck me as deeply unsettling. And that was before the camp came into view. A makeshift city of military tents sprawled along the loch's western shore, flanked by ships of all shape and size. As we descended, I began to make out more detail. The barbed wire fencing, the sophisticated comms equipment. And those boats, I realized, included armored gunships surrounding a barge with a huge metallic cage on its deck. Even closer, I realized that something moved inside that cage. Something completely shrouded in shadow. Something impossible. As soon as the chopper door opened, I realized I'd gravely underpacked. Wilson didn't seem to notice the cold and led me through a maze of commotion to a hermetically sealed tent at the center of the camp. Before we entered, he handed me latex gloves and a bulky respirator. Just in case, he said. The tent was colder than the air. Outside, scientists surrounded exam tables, each of which seemed to hold an unusually large specimen of fish. I stepped closer to one and found a savage looking thing with massive teeth. As my gloved hand brushed across its scaly body, I realized that I'd seen this fish before. Then it hit me this fish had appeared in a textbook I'd read in grad school. Its topic, extinct species from the Cretaceous period. Some hundred million years ago, Wilson finally decided to do some explaining. Apparently, after that energy source was detected beneath Loch Ness, strange things began washing up on its shores. Weird lizards, huge fish, four full tents of things Britain's best scientists had never seen before. I asked about the barge with the giant cage. That, he replied, is why you're here. As Wilson led me towards the water, he told me about what he called the big one. It was first spotted 36 hours ago by fishermen on the south end of the loch, and it created a wake so powerful that it allegedly capsized their trawler. A few hours later, another ship pinged something on its sonar, something far too big to be any known species. Finally, when a military vessel was attacked by some kind of dinosaur, everyone realized Loch Ness had a problem on its hands. But none of this made any sense to me. Not the specimens in the tent, not these stories, none of it. I tried to hold on to some semblance of rationality, but it felt like my whole worldview, my entire sense of being, was crumbling around me. Suddenly lightheaded, I saw my vision blurring around the edges, and Wilson reached to steady me. That's when the sirens began to wail. The camp instantly descended into chaos. Soldiers ran everywhere. Gunfire erupted in the distance. Someone slammed into me from behind, nearly knocking me over. And Wilson pulled me to cover as a shout rose above the sirens. It's loose. Wilson cursed under his breath and pulled me around the corner. From here, I could see that one of the ships in the lock had nearly capsized. It didn't take long for me to realize that it was the barge with the giant cage on its deck, and that cage was now empty. I immediately scanned the water's surface. And that's when I saw it. An enormous tail slipping beneath the waves, scaly and indescribably huge. It belonged to no species alive on Earth today. In fact, I knew it belonged to no creature that had graced this earth in over 65 million years, contradicting every fiber of logic left in my being. I had just seen a plesiosaur live and in the flesh. And that absolutely scared the hell out of me. Within minutes, we were out on the water. I counted 40 ships of every shape and size speeding across the lock, all searching. My boat, it seemed, held all the military's sophisticated tracking equipment. But when we couldn't find anything, Wilson worried that the creature had damaged its tracking device. During Its escape. Honestly, I'm not sure it was the technology's fault. Loch Ness was not only the second deepest lake in the UK at some 745ft, but also its largest, holding more than all the lakes in England and Wales combined. Plus, the area's peat made the water darker and murkier than any I'd ever seen. So locating the creature amounted to finding a needle in a 22 mile long haystack. We could have searched for hours, days even, and never seen a thing. After a few more minutes, with no sign of our target, Wilson asked me to tell him everything he needed to know about the plesiosaur. I was too distracted to really think, but my mouth rattled off the facts from rote memory. 50ft long and £100,000, the plesiosaur was among the largest animals to ever live on Earth. It had sharp teeth, a long neck and four extremely powerful flippers. It breathed air, bore live young, and was one of the most fearsome apex predators in history. But I still couldn't rationalize how Aplysiosaur was in Loch Ness. For starters, this Lake was only 10,000 years old, which missed the Cretaceous period by well tens of millions of years. And even if something had miraculously survived since then and found its way into these waters, the loch itself, large as it was, simply wasn't big enough to host a breeding population. Wilson reminded me of the countless sightings of unusual creatures in the loch over the years. The inexplicable energy source discovered in these waters. The living, breathing plesiosaur I'd seen with my own eyes. He was right. Something impossible was happening here. And I don't think a single soul on earth could properly explain it. Soon the hills began to cast ominous shadows across the water. And with no new sign of the plesiosaur, all large vessels, including ours, were ordered to drop huge swathes of high tensile netting into the loch. Given the quick work the creature made of the cage atop the barge, I was skeptical of this plan. But before I knew it, nearly a mile of buoys trailed behind us. Signal lights blinking in the shadows. Traps dipping hundreds of feet into the abyss. Soon the sun disappeared altogether and fog began to roll in over the water. Within minutes, visibility dropped to only a few hundred yards. That's when the shooting began. It sounded like a full on war had broken out across the lake. Wilson screamed into the radio to cease fire and use tranquilizers only, but it was useless. The shooting kept on echoed by distant screams, until suddenly everything went eerily silent. Soon a roar echoed across the water. Deep. Animal. Terrifying. Wilson radioed for all ships to confirm their status. Every vessel replied, except one. A small rescue craft that had been located a mile away from us. Wilson tried to hail them, but received only empty static in reply. We were about to move to intercept when our sonar pinged something in the deep. It was half a mile away and moving fast. Each new sonar sweep revealed a more and more frightening trajectory. It was coming right at us. Wilson ordered nearby vessels to converge on our location as soldiers rushed to their stations, and Wilson urged me to take cover on the bridge. But I couldn't budge. I had to see it. Needed to see it. The soldiers aimed their tranquilizer rifles blindly into the fog. As the sonar pings grew closer and closer in the distance, I saw bubbles break the water's surface near the fog line. Wilson cursed. This was just out of range of the rifles. But his men held fast, hoping, fearing the creature would close the gap. Suddenly, it breached the surface. Soldiers fired their tranquilizers, but the darts fell short. Gulping air, the creature arched its muscular flank and tail above the. Meanwhile, all I could do was stare, amazed at the sheer size of the thing. At least 100ft long, it was double the size we described to plesiosaurs. Clearly, our fossil record was woefully incomplete. As soon as it dipped back below the waves, the sonar went silent. The nets, Wilson whispered. It's behind them. All eyes turned to the buoys trailing behind us. Though my rational brain fought it, my feet pulled me towards the ship's railing. I was desperate for a closer view and was terrified I'd get it. As we stared out into the dark, Wilson told me he had a little girl at home, six years old. Her favorite toy was a stuffed dinosaur, some kind of long necked thing. She took everywhere, he said, but her favorite place to bring it, much to his consternation, was the bathtub, because she claimed dinosaurs like to swim. We shared a nervous laugh, and I realized he was sweating. Suddenly, a buoy vanished from view. I thought it had been lost to the fog, but when a second buoy disappeared as well, I realized the creature was caught in the nets. Wilson shouted to the bridge, come about. Trap the bastard. Our engines roared to life, and the steel line that connected us to the buoys began to loop back, aiming to entrap whatever lurked beneath. Meanwhile, the soldiers prepared to fire on anything that broke the surface. But our ship suddenly jolted, knocking me clear of my feet. Pulled from below, the entire vessel tilted at a perilous angle before springing back to level. I gripped the railing and held my breath as another jolt hit, this time pulling the stern of the ship so low that water flooded the deck. As one hapless soldier fell overboard, I realized with horror what was happening. The creature was pulling us under using our own nets. Then the world flipped upside down. The frigid water assaulted my limbs and lungs. I gasped for breath, tried to get my bearings, but chaos was everywhere. Our ship had capsized. Soldiers flailed wildly, their tranquilizer rifles soaked and useless. Fifteen feet away, I saw Wilson Bl bloodied and struggling to stay afloat. I swam towards him until something blocked my way. The plesiosaur. Its gleaming flank glided past me, so close I could smell it. Something thick and rancid, something I'll never forget as long as I live. Once it disappeared below the water again, I told Wilson to hang on until I could reach him. I was nearly an arm's length away when Wilson jerked below the surface. He struggled to stay afloat, but it was futile. No human, no creature alive was powerful enough to fight this attack from below. Wilson locked eyes with me for a split second, then was gone before I could fully comprehend the terror around me. I was pulled up from the water and onto the hull of a fishing trawler. I told the sailors to speed away, to get as far far as possible from this thing, this monster. But they reassured me that someone had hit the beast with the tranquilizer. We would be okay. I wish I could have believed them. The jolt came out of nowhere, shattering the trawler's wooden hull and knocking the sailors into the water. I slid across the deck as the rest of the boat exploded in splinters all around me. And just as I shielded my eyes for protection, I felt a burst of hot, sickening breath across my face. The plesiosaur's head was resting on the sinking deck of the trawler, it snout inches from my body, too shocked to move. All I could do was stare at the razor sharp teeth, the sorrowful, glassy eyes. The eyes of a hopelessly confused and frightened creature. It was beautiful and horrible and terrifying and mesmerizing all at once. The tranquilizer dart had hit just above the neck. I knew that soon the creature would slip back below the waves. But for now, I just stared at it, face to face, its ragged breath heaving in sync with mine. I wanted to reach out and touch it, if I could just find the courage to touch it. But my arms were frozen. It blinked once, let out a soft Tragic moan, then slid away into the deep. They searched the loch up and down for 18 more hours, but never found it again. At some point, the strange energy source in the lakebed disappeared without a trace. I'd like to think the plesiosaur vanished with it taken back to wherever or whenever it came from. I was handsomely rewarded for my time, though I insisted I never did anything more than gawk at what was happening around me. Nevertheless, the money appeared in my checking account, and I was told firmly that I could never discuss what happened on Loch Ness that day with anyone ever again. So our textbooks still assert that the plesiosaur reaches maximum lengths of 50ft. And though I've finally made tenure, I spend less time in the classroom and more in the field searching for fossil evidence of what I know now is true. Sometimes, late at night, I still see it. The glistening skin, the unforgettable arc of its flank above the waterline. But now those dreams are always nightmares.
