A group of paleontologists have found a skeleton of a 50-foot long dinosaur with elongated neck that may have lived 160 million years ago. Among the things that make the ancient creature interesting is that is has the physical characteristics that resemble those of a dragon.
The fossils of the herbivorous Qijianglong guokr, which was described in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology on Jan. 26, were discovered in Qijiang City, China in 2006 by construction workers who managed to unearth it with its head still attach to its elongated neck.
Because the bones of the dinosaur resemble the shape of Chinese mythical dragons, local farmers who saw the fossil gave it the name Qijianglong, or the Dragon of Qijian.
"We found the dinosaur's huge vertebrae with the skull and the tail, but couldn't find any bones from the hands or the legs. So the locals began to say the long body looked just like a dragon from ancient Chinese stories," said Lida Xing, from the University of Alberta, who is part of the research team that made the discovery.
The researchers reported that the new species belonged to a group of dinosaurs known as mamenchisaurids, which are characterized by their extremely long neck.
Compared with most sauropods, the long-necked dinosaurs, which include the likes of Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus, and Brontosaurus, whose necks take up one third of their body length, mamenchisaurids have necks that span up to half of the length of their body.
Xing and colleagues likewise determined that the dinosaur's vertebrae are filled with air so its weight is lighter compared with the neck bones of other animals.
Qijianglong is the latest addition to the mamenchisaurid group and the find shows just how diversified long-necked dinosaurs are in Asia during the Jurassic time. The researchers noted that nowhere in the world are there dinosaurs that have longer necks than those in China suggesting that there were extreme species that lived in isolation with paleontologists proposing that the isolation is due to sea or other natural barriers.
"Qijianglong is the first mamenchisaurid from the Late Jurassic of China that is definitively distinct from Mamenchisaurus, indicating greater morphological and taxonomic diversity of the poorly represented Late Jurassic mamenchisaurids," the researchers wrote.
A museum in Qijiang currently houses the Qijianglong skeleton but the fossil will be moved to a new dinosaur museum that is currently still being constructed.
