French farmers take tractors back on the streets of Paris in new protest

23 February 2024, 18:54

France Farmers Protests. Picture: PA

The farmers are part of a broader protest movement in Europe against EU agriculture policies, bureaucracy and overall business conditions.

Angry farmers have headed back to Paris on their tractors in a new protest demanding more government support and simpler regulations, on the eve of a major agricultural fair in the French capital.

Dozens of tractors drove peacefully into Paris carrying flags from Rural Co-ordination, the farmers’ union that staged the protest.

The protesters then posed with their tractors on a bridge over the River Seine with the Eiffel Tower in the background, before heading towards the Vauban plaza in central Paris, where they all gathered for the demonstration.

The latest protest comes three weeks after farmers lifted roadblocks around Paris and elsewhere in the country after the government offered more than 400 million euros to address their grievances over low earnings, heavy regulation and what they describe as unfair competition from abroad.

Farmers are demanding more government support and simpler regulations (Thomas Padilla/AP)

“Save our agriculture,” the Rural Co-ordination said on X, formerly Twitter. One tractor was carrying a poster reading: “Death is in the field.”

The convoy temporarily slowed traffic on the A4 motorway, east of the capital, and on the Paris ring-road earlier on Friday morning.

French farmers’ actions are part of a broader protest movement in Europe against EU agriculture policies, bureaucracy and overall business conditions.

Farmers complain that the 27-nation bloc’s environmental policies, such as the Green Deal, which calls for limits on the use of chemicals and on greenhouse gas emissions, limit their business and make their products more expensive than non-EU imports.

Other protests are being staged across France as farmers seek to put pressure on the government to implement its promises.

Government officials have held a series of meetings with farmers’ unions in recent weeks to discuss a new bill meant to defend France’s “agricultural sovereignty”, and which will be debated in parliament this spring.

The latest protest comes three weeks after farmers lifted roadblocks around Paris (Thomas Padilla/AP)

The government’s plan also includes hundreds of millions of euros in aid, tax breaks and a promise not to ban pesticides in France that are allowed elsewhere in Europe. French farmers say such bans put them at an unfair disadvantage.

Cyril Hoffman, a cereal producer in the Burgundy region and a member of the Rural Co-ordination, said farmers now want the government to “take action”.

He said his union is advocating for exempting the farming industry from free trade agreements.

“They can make free trade agreements but agriculture should not be part of them, so we can remain sovereign regarding our food,” Mr Hoffman said. “Only in France do we let our farming disappear.”

French President Emmanuel Macron planned to visit the Paris Agricultural Fair on Saturday, though his office appeared to have removed from his agenda a previously scheduled “big debate” with farmers and members of environmental groups at the event.

The president will meet with farmers’ unions before the fair’s opening, his office said on Friday.

Yet France’s major farmers’ union, the FNSEA, said its board decided not to participate in the debate because “conditions for a peaceful dialogue are not met”. The FNSEA staged another protest in Paris, near the site of the fair, on Friday afternoon.

The Paris Agricultural Fair is one of the world’s largest farm fairs, drawing crowds every year.

By Press Association

France, Poland lead new wave of European farmer anger

By AFP
February 23, 2024

Tractors rolled into Paris on Friday as farmers sought to pile pressure on French President Emmanuel Macron - Copyright NASA/AFP Handout

French and Polish farmers led a new surge of agricultural anger in Europe on Friday, taking tractors into major cities and blocking roads to demand lighter regulation and taxation.

Farmers across the continent have been protesting for weeks over what they say are excessively restrictive environmental rules, competition from cheap imports from outside the European Union and low incomes.

Tractors rolled into Paris as farmers sought to pile pressure on French President Emmanuel Macron on the eve of a flagship annual agricultural show which has turned into a major political event.

Promises of reforms by the government in response to January’s protests have failed to placate the farmers, who were due to discuss their grievances with Macron at the Salon de l’Agriculture on Saturday before the president cancelled the planned debate.

“We’re really not being listened to, because we’re really being taken for pawns,” Nicolas Bongay, president of a farmers’ union in the rural Doubs department, told AFP.

“It’s very, very hard for everyone. We came here not to go away… we’re staying.”

Macron’s name was whistled and booed at a meeting of farmers belonging to France’s main agricultural union on Friday evening, an AFP journalist said.

French farmers have continued to block roads, set fire to tyres and lay siege to supermarkets, saying they need more measures.

Farmers in Spain have also held mass protests this week.

– Ukraine PM snubbed –

In eastern Europe, Polish officials snubbed a delegation led by Ukraine’s prime minister on Friday seeking to resolve tensions caused by weeks-long Polish farmer protests at their border.

Polish farmers have vowed to block a key road linking Poland and Germany from Sunday.

Polish farmers have blocked crossing points at the Ukrainian border to denounce what they say is unfair competition from their war-torn neighbour’s cheaper produce.

Polish authorities said they had never agreed to a border meeting over the demonstrations, which Ukraine says threaten its exports and are holding up deliveries of crucial weapons for its two-year war against Russia.

“Unfortunately, Polish government officials did not come,” said Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal.

“But we publicly appealed to them, gave our proposals, and will continue this work.”

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s chief of staff told AFP Warsaw had not sent a delegation because a meeting “makes no sense at the moment”.

The two sides were “far” from a deal to end the showdown, said Jan Grabiec, and “there is not yet a Ukrainian proposition that allows to hope for an end to the deadlock”.

On Friday, Polish police said grain from Ukraine had been spilled on a Polish railway close to the border — the second such incident this week.

EU ministers are to meet in Brussels on Monday to discuss new European Commission proposals aiming to change regulations at the heart of the discontent, for example reducing the number of checks on produce.

burs-imm/tw

Spain farmers drive tractors into central Madrid as part of ongoing protests against EU

Many tractors flew Spanish flags and some farmers carried banners reading, 'There is no life without farming', and 'Farmers in Extinction'

AP/PTI Madrid Published 22.02.24,

A protester clashes with a police officer as Spanish farmers protest in Madrid on Wednesday

Reuters

Hundreds of farmers drove their tractors into central Madrid on Wednesday as part of ongoing protests against EU and local farming policies and to demand measures to alleviate production cost hikes.

The protest, the biggest to take place in the Spanish capital after more than two weeks of daily protests across the country, will include a rally outside the agriculture ministry headquarters.

Many of the tractors flew Spanish flags and some farmers carried banners reading, “There is no life without farming”, and “Farmers in Extinction”.

“It is impossible to live from the rural industry, which is what we want, to live from our work. That is all we ask for,” Silvia Ruiz, 46, a livestock farmer from the north-central area of Burgos said.

The Union of Unions organising group said they were bringing 500 tractors and many more farmers on buses. Many of the tractors may have to stay outside the city because of government restrictions.

Similar protests have taken place across the bloc in recent weeks. Farmers complain that the 27-nation EU’s policies on the environment and other matters are a financial burden and make their products more expensive than non-EU imports. Spain and the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, have made some concessions in recent weeks but farmers say they are insufficient.

Besides EU policies, Spanish farmers maintain that a law aimed at guaranteeing that wholesale major supermarket buyers pay fair prices for their goods isn’t being enforced while consumer prices soar.

In France, the EU’s largest agricultural producer, the government of President Macron is also under intense pressure from angry farmers who held major demonstrations last month and have since continued with more scattered protests to push for better pay and other assistance.

NHS strike action: Junior doctors in England begin five-day walkout threatening further patient disruption

Sky News
Fri, 23 February 2024 



Patients face further major disruption as junior doctors in England begin a five-day strike in their ongoing pay row with the government.

Tens of thousands of hospital appointments are set to be cancelled or postponed as a result of the latest walkout which began at 7am on Saturday and will stretch until 11.59pm on Wednesday.

It is the 10th stoppage by junior doctors since last March and follows the longest strike in NHS history in January, which lasted six full days.

"The government could have stopped these strikes by simply making a credible pay offer for junior doctors in England to begin reversing the pay cuts they have inflicted upon us for more than a decade," Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi, co-chairs of the BMA junior doctors committee, said.

"The same government could have even accepted our offer to delay this round of strike action to give more space for talks - all we asked for in return was a short extension of our mandate to strike.

"The fact that ministers have chosen strike action over what could have been the end of this year's pay dispute is disappointing to say the least."

The BMA also expects its strike mandate to be renewed raising the prospect of further industrial action.

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said: "I want to see doctors treating patients, not standing on picket lines.

"In negotiations with the BMA junior doctors committee, we made it clear we were prepared to go further than the pay increase of up to 10.3% that they have already received. They refused to put our offer to their members.

"More than 1.3 million appointments and operations have already been cancelled or rescheduled since industrial action began - five days of further action will compound this.

"The NHS has robust contingency plans in place, and it is vital that people continue to come forward for treatment. But no one should underestimate the impact these strikes have on our NHS.

"So again, I urge the BMA junior doctors committee to call off their strikes and show they are prepared to be reasonable, so that we can come back to the negotiating table to find a fair way forward."

Junior doctors have received a pay rise averaging nearly 9% this financial year.

The BMA has been seeking a 35% "pay restoration" as its starting position, but has said it is willing to negotiate.

Junior doctors make up around half of all doctors in the NHS and have anywhere up to eight years' experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in general practice.

Wes Streeting, Labour's shadow health secretary, described the latest round of strikes as having "a devastating impact on patients" but said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was refusing to negotiate.

NHS national medical director Professor Sir Stephen Powis said it is "extremely concerning" that strike action and disruption "are becoming a new normal".

"For the equivalent of more than one in every 10 days last year, the NHS has had to effectively stop carrying out most routine appointments to prioritise emergency care," he added.

Deputy chief executive of NHS Providers Saffron Cordery said: "We can't go on like this. Wave after wave of strikes saps the morale of staff and impacts patients.

"Trust leaders want to get on with the job of giving patients first-class care instead of having to spend too much time and energy planning for and coping with weeks of disruptive strikes."

Tenth round of junior doctors’ strike action set to go ahead from this weekend

February 22, 2024 Kathy Bailes News 

Strike action (image @BMA_JuniorDocs)

Strike action by junior doctors will take place from 7am on Saturday (24 February) to midnight on Wednesday (28 February).

The British Medical Association says action is being taken because while workload and waiting lists are at record highs, junior doctors’ pay has been cut by more than a quarter since 2008.

Data shows NHS staff continue to contend with high demand for urgent and emergency care, with 89,377 ambulance handovers to hospitals last week, up 12% from 79,752 in the same week last year nationally.

By the end of the walk out hospital doctors will have taken 44 days or 1,056 hours of industrial action over the last year.

The British Medical Association says: “Progress was being made in talks but the Government failed to meet the deadline of 8 February to present a credible offer.

“In order to allow more time for negotiations to continue, we extended an offer to the Health Secretary to cancel this round of strikes before it was announced publicly if she agreed to extend the mandate for strike action for four weeks. Unfortunately she declined to do so leaving us no choice but to announce this final strike of our mandate.”

To mitigate the impact of strike action, trusts are putting in place measures to maintain care for those who need it urgently, and rescheduling planned appointments which are now unable to go ahead.

The previous round of industrial action by junior doctors took place in January. Junior doctors make up around half of all doctors in the NHS and have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in general practice.

The NHS is advising the public to use 111 online as the first port of call for urgent but not life-threatening issues during industrial action so that they can be directed to the best place for their needs. Patients who need medical care should continue to use 999 or go to A&E as normal.

Patients who haven’t been contacted to say their appointment has been cancelled should also attend as normal.

Junior doctors in the NHS in England say they are taking strike action to:

• achieve full pay restoration to reverse the steep decline in pay faced by junior doctors since 2008/9
• agree on a mechanism with the Government to prevent any future declines against the cost of living and inflation
• reform the DDRB (Doctors’ and Dentists’ Review Body) process so pay increases can be recommended independently and fairly to safeguard the recruitment and retention of junior doctors.

Hospitals in South Korea on high alert as doctors continue protests

The protesting doctors argue that the South Korea government should focus on improving doctors’ pay and reducing workloads.

February 23, 2024

The ongoing protest is causing widespread disruption to hospital services and ‘red alert’ situation across South Korea’s emergency departments. Credit: chrisdorney/Shuttertsock.com.

All the emergency departments across South Korea’s hospitals, except one, are on high alert after trainee doctors’ continued their protests against government reforms to increase medical school admissions.

The protests, that commenced earlier this week, are causing widespread disruption to hospital services in the country, as almost two-thirds of the country’s trainee doctors have participated in the walkout.

They have also resulted in ‘red alert’ situation across the country’s emergency departments, with many hospitals forced to turn away patients and cancel procedures.

South Korea’s health ministry confirmed that over 8,400 doctors, representing about 64% of all resident and intern doctors in the country, have joined the strike, a Reuters report noted.

The government has responded with threats of arrest for those leading the walkout.

The trainee doctors are protesting in response to the government’s decision to increase the medical school admissions to improve the healthcare system.

 

“Unbelievable but true” data show UK firms equipping Russia’s war machine

There but for the grace of British industry go I. / Russian defence ministry

By bne IntelliNews February 23, 2024

It may be difficult to believe, but it’s almost certainly true: UK firms are playing an important role in equipping Russia’s war machine.

That’s the conclusion of Sky News data analysis released on February 21, which found that British companies are exporting hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment and machinery to former Soviet satellite states including Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Georgia that is then re-exported to Russia, undermining the official UK sanctions regime applied to the Kremlin.

Drone equipment and heavy machinery are among the surging shipments with no other logical end-destination but Russia.

Exports to the small Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan—exposed last September for shipping onwards to Russia Chinese ball bearings that play a key role in the production of tanks—have risen at the breakneck speed of 1,100% since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exactly two years ago, while the growth rate in shipped British goods to Armenia is not far behind.

Among the consignments are large volumes of sensitive, "dual-use" goods that can be sold to civilian manufacturers, prior to being redirected and repurposed for use in making weaponry and equipment for the Russian armed forces.

The Sky analysis also showed that by far and away the biggest category of British goods being dispatched to the four Central Asian and South Caucasus nations assessed was "parts of aeroplanes, helicopters or unmanned aircraft".

British companies have reportedly exported £6m worth of these goods to the four nations, well above what they historically have tended to export to them. Other items sent are said to include data processing machines, aeronautic navigation equipment and radio navigation aids. So it appears that while entities such as the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) come up with new esoteric “smart sanctions” with which to hit Russia—bne IntelliNews reported earlier this month how turbine lubricants and their additives used in maintaining weapons were the latest target—UK sanctions enforcers are perhaps not quite keeping their end of the bargain in addressing sanctions-dodging that is staring them in the face.

According to Tom Keatinge of British defence and security think tank Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), as cited by Sky: "It's absolutely a red flag if you're producing that kind of equipment [that we see in the analysis]... and you've got this big spike in exports to Kyrgyzstan.

"You've surely got to stop and ask yourself: why is that? Am I indirectly resourcing the Russian military? And clearly you don't want to be doing that. And indeed, in doing that, you're probably in breach of sanctions.

"The tragedy is that whenever the Ukrainians dissect a drone, or a cruise missile or communications equipment that they get their hands on, there are components in those bits of equipment that come from the EU, that come from the UK and come from the US, and have been manufactured since February 2022.

"So these are fresh exports, these are not legacy exports."

Robin Brooks, former chief economist of financial body the Institute of International Finance (IIF), has in the past year increasingly raised the alarm about rocketing exports to ex-Soviet nations that appear bound for Russia. He has also pointed the finger at Germany and Poland as other countries with many exporters indirectly sending large quantities of hardware to Russia.

"They're clearly getting an order from somewhere that is a Russian satellite that happens to be domiciled in one of these Central Asian countries," he said in response to the new analysis.

"What happens then? Maybe there's plausible deniability, maybe they know... all we know for sure is that the rise in export volumes that is happening is completely insane, and is inconsistent with any underlying data in these countries.

"So the only reasonable explanation is: Russia.

"From the Western European and especially the EU side, I would say, this has been going on for a while. It is at this point widely known in Brussels, and I think there is a key question as to why nothing is being done at a central EU level to stop this?"

'Everything has changed since Apollo': Why landing on the moon is still incredibly difficult in 2024

By Sharmila Kuthunur 

published about 5 hours ago

More than 50 years after the Apollo era, major governments and well-funded private companies still struggle with lunar landing missions. Why is landing on the moon so hard in 2024?


Japan’s Hakuto-R lander snapped this stunning picture of Earth and the lunar horizon days before it crashed onto the lunar surface in April 2023. (Image credit: ispace)

On Thursday (Feb. 22), a phone booth-sized spacecraft named Odysseus made history. Landing at the moon’s south pole at 6:23 p.m. ET, Odysseus — built by the Houston-based company Intuitive Machines — became the first U.S. lander to touch down on the moon in more than 50 years, and the first private lander to ever reach the lunar surface.

This success was a welcome break from a string of lunar failures, with five of the previous nine attempted moon landings ending poorly for various nations and private companies.

Weeks earlier, on Jan. 19, Japan's Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon (SLIM) spacecraft successfully completed the country's first moon landing — albeit ending up upside down on the lunar surface due to an engine malfunction during descent. The lopsided lander's solar cells faced the wrong direction and failed to power its instruments and communications, forcing engineers to shut it down in fear of battery discharge. (Engineers briefly restored power to the lander 10 days later, but the impending lunar night shortened SLIM’s science observations to just a few hours before it went offline again.)

Just 10 days prior to SLIM's landing, a private U.S. moon lander named Peregrine encountered many anomalies after launch, including a propellant leak that prevented the spacecraft from landing on the moon. It was ultimately rerouted to crash into Earth's atmosphere. Other lunar landing attempts made by Japan and Russia in 2023 similarly ended in catastrophic crashes, this time on the moon itself.

Government-funded space agencies of only five countries have successfully touched down on the moon: the United States, the former Soviet Union, China, India and Japan. Just one private company (Intuitive Machines) has succeeded so far, and several high-profile missions have failed due to technical glitches that led to fatal judgments of speed, altitude and orientation — a stark reminder that even after half a century since the Apollo astronauts walked on the moon, our closest celestial neighbor remains a challenging and dangerous destination.

So, what gives? Has humanity gotten worse at lunar landings? Or are we simply grappling with a new era of technological advancements, just like the teams behind the Apollo missions did?

"We did not get 'dumber' since the Apollo landings," Csaba Palotai, a professor of physics and space sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, told Live Science. Technology is significantly better today; your cellphone has more computational power than computers had in the 1970s. "But since the '70s there have been no astronauts and pilots on the landers to correct what the computers can't or won't," Palotai added

Acing the technology (again)

Make no mistake: Landing on the moon is hard, with or without human pilots.

A major hurdle is the moon's virtual lack of atmosphere. The lunar atmosphere is very thin and varies with time, preventing engineers from including parachutes to slow down spacecraft, Palotai said. Instead, missions use fuel-powered propulsion systems to descend onto the moon's surface, making it challenging to slow the spacecraft from a few kilometers per second to a perfect halt.

Yet this and other lunar exploration challenges are not new.

While the Apollo program was ultimately successful in landing humans on the moon, it was the culmination of a large program that failed many times on its way to success. Early attempts by the U.S. and the Soviet Union to fly a spacecraft to the moon were riddled with failures, including post-launch explosions, malfunctions with guidance systems, and fatal errors with solar panel deployment. Even the historic Apollo 11 mission, which landed astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon, was worryingly low on fuel and faced multiple unexpected alarms just before landing on the moon.

"People tend to forget about those mission failures as being part of the learning process," said Jack Burns, director of the NASA-funded Network for Exploration and Space Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. This experiential learning perch is where moon missions, especially a growing number of privately funded ones, currently are. "It's still hard to land on the moon, but far from impossible," he said.

Burns and other experts agree that just about everything has changed since the Apollo program, including the now-antiquated technology that took humans to the moon and back in the '60s and '70s. Engineers with the Apollo program had built the first computers of their time, including sensors that have since been made more powerful in a fraction of their original sizes. Much of the software and architecture customized for the Apollo program is effectively useless for space missions today.

Moreover, "that whole generation is out of the industry at this point, and a lot of that knowledge has been lost," said John Thornton, CEO of Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology, which built and operated Peregrine. "We are relearning how to do this, but we're also learning it with technology that is new and different."

Half a century after humans last walked on the moon, organizations smaller than NASA — powered by a new generation of engineers — have taken on the same challenge that only governments accomplished in the past. Palotai, Thornton and Burns view the recent moon mission failures as the natural progression of a new industry.

"Personally, I'm not worried," Burns said. "It's just part of the growing pains."

Paving the way for affordable moon missions

While technological issues influence the outcome of a mission, funding determines the extent of the software and hardware testing done in advance of launch to reduce risk.

"If we had a billion dollars to do this mission, our chances of success would go way up," Thornton said of the doomed Peregrine, whose mission failure investigation is expected to take a month or two. "But we're trying to do this at a much lower cost, which means you have to try many more times before you get to that breakthrough moment of, 'OK, now we know exactly how to do it at this price point. Let's keep doing it again and again.'"

Back in the '60s and '70s, in the heat of the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the Apollo program was the crux of NASA's work, and the space agency had 10 times its current budget to do the same thing. Between 1960 and 1973, NASA spent $25.8 billion ($257 billion when adjusted for inflation) on the Apollo program and was backed by nearly 5% of the total U.S. federal budget.

Comparatively, NASA now receives less than 0.5% of the nation's overall federal spending, and that budget also funds missions to destinations beyond the moon.

"That changes everything," Thornton said. Back then, NASA was fine with developing something that cost tens of billions of dollars. In comparison, today the industry is trying to build spacecraft for about $100 million, an affordable price that's key to routine flights. This problem is fundamentally different from those of the Apollo era. "It's going to take time to learn how to do it at that price point," Thornton said.

Lowering mission costs also increases the risk of failure, at least to start, Martin Barstow, a professor of astrophysics and space science at the University of Leicester in the U.K., told Live Science. So "we shouldn't be too surprised if some of these things don't work," Barstow added.

The first commercial victory

The Odysseus spacecraft’s successful landing on Feb. 22 marked a welcome breakthrough for the commercial spaceflight industry.

The lander (nicknamed "Odie") delivered 12 payloads to the moon, including six NASA science instruments. For these, the space agency paid Intuitive Machines $118 million through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program (CLPS), designed to award private companies contracts to send experiments to the moon rather than NASA doing it itself. (NASA moon missions can cost up to $1 billion each.)

As part of the same CLPS program, Astrobotic plans to launch its second robotic moon lander, Griffin, and a water-hunting rover this November.

 

Stunning 240 million-year-old 'Chinese dragon' fossil unveiled by scientists

News

By Ben Turner

 published about 9 hours ago

A bizarre dragon-like creature that lived during the Triassic period used its remarkably long neck to hunt unsuspecting prey in shallow water, scientists have found.

A cropped photo of the Dinocephalosaurus orientalis fossil. (Image credit: National Museums Scotland)

Scientists have unveiled stunning fossils of an ancient seaborne "dragon" discovered in China.

The 240 million-year-old animal — nicknamed the "Chinese dragon" — belongs to the species Dinocephalosaurus orientalis, a reptile that used its remarkably long neck to ambush unsuspecting prey in shallow waters during the Triassic period (252 million to 201 million years ago).

The species was first found in limestone deposits in southern China in 2003, but scientists have now pieced together remains to reconstruct the full 16.8-foot (5 meters) span of the spectacular ancient carnivore for the first time.

The researchers revealed the new findings in a study published Feb. 23 in the journal Earth and Environmental Science: Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

"It is yet one more example of the weird and wonderful world of the Triassic that continues to baffle paleontologists," Nick Fraser, keeper of natural sciences at National Museums Scotland said in a statement. "We are certain that it will capture imaginations across the globe due to its striking appearance, reminiscent of the long and snake-like, mythical Chinese Dragon." 

A full-size photo of dinocephalosaurus orientalis. (Image credit: National Museums Scotland)

The fossil reveals some of the ancient sea dragon's striking features.

First and foremost is its neck, which stretches nearly 7.7 feet (2.3 meters) and contains 32 separate vertebrae — in comparison, giraffes (as well as humans) have only seven neck vertebrae.

The snake-like shape of the dragon's articulable neck likely gave it a remarkable ability to sneak up on its prey, which it did after maneuvering into position with its flippered limbs. Some of the fish snared in the dragon's serrated teeth are still preserved inside the sea monster's belly.

The researchers note that though the strange creature may be reminiscent of the Loch Ness Monster, it is not closely related to the long-necked plesiosaurs that inspired the famous mythical creature.

"We hope that our future research will help us understand more about the evolution of this group of animals, and particularly how the elongate neck functioned," first-author Stephan Spiekman, a postdoctoral researcher based at the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History, said in the statement.