Nessie

Nessie is a water-attributed Amargasaurus and is the goth of the D-Team.

## Character design

### personality

Nessie isn't that much of a fighter, in fact, she rarely engages in combat at all, unless she is summoned to. Instead, she is sort of like Loona and acts and talks like a goth girl. She is very deep with what she says and goes straight to the point about it.

### anatomy

As an Amargasaurus, Nessie is small for a sauropod, measuring 9 to 10 meters (30 to 33 feet) in length and weighing approximately 2.6 metric tons (2.9 short tons). she follows the typical sauropod body plan, with a long tail and neck, a small head, and a barrel-shaped trunk supported by four column-like legs. Her neck is shorter than in most other sauropods, a common trait within the Dicraeosauridae. Measuring 2.4 meters (7.9 feet) in length, her neck corresponded to 136% of the length of her dorsal vertebral column. This is comparable to *Dicraeosaurus* (123%) but greater than in the extremely short-necked form *Brachytrachelopan* (75%). The neck consisted of thirteen cervical vertebrae, which were opisthocoelous (convex at the front and hollow at the back), forming ball-and-socket joints with neighboring vertebrae. Her trunk is made out of nine dorsal and probably five fused sacral vertebrae. The foremost dorsals were opisthocoelous, while the remaining dorsals were amphiplatyan (flat on both ends). Robust transverse processes (lateral projections connecting to the ribs) indicate a strongly developed rib cage. Nessie's dorsal vertebrae lacked pleurocoels, the deep lateral excavations that were characteristic for other sauropods.

Nessie's most striking feature is her extremely tall, upwardly projecting neural spines on the neck and anterior dorsal vertebrae. From the third cervical onward, these neural spines were bifurcated along their entire length, forming a double row. They were circular in cross section and tapered towards their tips. The tallest spines could be found on the middle part of the neck, where they reached 60 centimeters (24 inches) on the 8th cervical. On the neck, they were bowed backward, projecting above the adjacent vertebra. A similar elongated neural spine has been described from the neck region of the closely related *Bajadasaurus* in 2019. Unlike in *Amargasaurus*, this spine was bowed frontward and broadened toward the tips. The last two dorsal vertebrae, the hip, and the foremost tail in *Amargasaurus* also had elongated spines; these were not bifurcated but flared into a paddle-shaped upper end. The pelvic region was relatively wide, judging from the long, laterally projecting transverse processes of the sacral vertebrae. The forelimbs were somewhat shorter than the hind limbs, as in related sauropods. Most of the hand and foot bones were not preserved, but Nessie possessed five digits each as in all sauropods.

Only the rear part of Nessie's skull is preserved. It showed a horse-like, broad snout equipped with pencil-like teeth. As in other dicraeosaurids, the external naris (nostril opening) is situated in the posterior half of the skull, diagonally above the orbit (eye opening), which was proportionally large. As in most other dinosaurs, the skull featured three additional openings (fenestrae). The infratemporal fenestra, located below the orbit, was long and narrow. Behind the orbit was the supratemporal fenestra, which in dicraeosaurids was uniquely small and can be seen when the skull is viewed from the side. This contrasts with other diapsid reptiles, where these openings were directed upward, thus being visible only in top view. The antorbital fenestra would have been located in front of the eye opening, although this region is not preserved. An unusual feature is small openings seen on the backside of the skull, the so-called parietal openings or fontanelles. In other tetrapods, these openings are usually seen only in juveniles and would close as the individual grows. Skull features shared with *Dicraeosaurus* but absent in.