Lariosauro

In Italian folklore, Lariosauro is a lake monster said to live in Lake Como in Italy, about north of Milan. Como is one of the deepest European lakes, at about at the deepest location.

In 1946, eyewitnesses allegedly reported seeing a reptile-like animal swimming in the waters of the lake. It was called lariosauro, the same name used a century before to name a prehistoric reptile whose fossilized remains were found by the lake (Lariosaurus balsami). A weekly of Como, a week after the first article, wrote it was a sturgeon, but the sturgeon as well as the monster appear to be more simply a hoax invented by the press.