Massive 50-foot 'DRAGON' dinosaur "Qijianglong" unearthed in Qijiang city China

from CNN

Paleontologists have discovered a 50-foot "dragon" dinosaur species in China that may have roamed the earth 160 million years ago during the Late Jurassic period.

The long skeleton was found in 2006 by farmers digging for a fish pond in Qijiang city in the southwestern Chongqing province.

Lida Xing, a member of the research team from the University of Alberta who made the discovery, told CNN it was named Qijianglong, the "dragon of Qijiang" because farmers thought the bones resembled the shape of Chinese mythical dragons.

"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 Xing.

The findings, published earlier this week in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, show that the new species belongs to a group of dinosaurs called mamenchisaurids, known for their extremely long necks, which would measure up to half their body length.

The reconstructed skeleton of Qijianglong in Qijiang Museum in China

"Qijianglong shows that long-necked dinosaurs diversified in unique ways in Asia during Jurassic times -- something very special was going on in that continent," said Miya#a.

"Nowhere else we can find dinosaurs with longer necks than those in China. The new dinosaur tells us that these extreme species thrived in isolation from the rest of the world."

The skeleton is now housed in a museum in Qijiang, but will be moved to a new dinosaur museum in the city that is currently being built.

To me this is another "Myth" that has a basis in fact. Imagine finding a skeleton like this 200 years ago..DRAGONS I tell ya!

I'm guessing that critter would have spent a lot of its time in the water.
A neck that long would have to start aching like a bitch under the gravity of dry land in short time.

What utter nonsense. Looks NOTHING like a dragon. Brontasauras or diplodicus yes, but a dragon.
Total FAIL !

originally posted by: sayzaar
What utter nonsense. Looks NOTHING like a dragon. Brontasauras or diplodicus yes, but a dragon.
Total FAIL !

Right from the CNN story.. "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 Xing. " so yeah a Dragon...

The neck in the first picture looks way out of proportion from any dino pic I've ever seen or imagined. Are they sure this is real, and not just a stack of similar but unrelated bones? More like an Onion article. That said, if this is real, that's one long-necked bird, no idea how it was able to move around. Can you imagine two of these things fighting over a long-necked woman? Wild looking bugger (and by bugger, I mean dragon?).

a reply to: Aleister

I too have a hard time believing that first picture is an actual, single skeleton. With a neck that long, it seems like there would be some real problems trying to get food to move from the mouth down into the digestive system, and in getting oxygen to the lungs....

a reply to: DjembeJedi

So the locals began to say the long body looked just like a dragon from ancient Chinese stories," said Xing. " so yeah a Dragon...

So the locals called it a dragon, so it is obviously a dragon.

Although I would love to see that thing fly.

That i the most insane long neck ive ever seen, its just.... ridiculous.


Imagine how long it would take food to reach its stomach!


Makes you wonder just how huge some of the vegetation must have grown to require a neck of such epic proportions.

originally posted by: tsurfer2000h
a reply to: DjembeJedi

So the locals began to say the long body looked just like a dragon from ancient Chinese stories," said Xing. " so yeah a Dragon...

So the locals called it a dragon, so it is obviously a dragon.

Although I would love to see that thing fly.

You've got the context wrong. You are actually in agreement with DJembeJedi who disagrees with Sayzaar.

DJembeJedi is stating the dragon myths arose because people dug up dinosaur skelton heads. Makes perfect sense to me but Sayzaar disagrees.

***OP DISCLAIMER.. I do not Repeat DO NOT think this is was or could be a Dragon.lol.I was just repeating the initial reports from villagers on what they thought it looked like... So lets chill and enjoy the new find..NOW I do wonder based off of comments if the neck really is too long...I think it could be two specimens mixed together. But once again I do NOT believe in friggin Dragons..lol

From the abstract

The holotype consists of an incomplete skull, partly articulated axial skeleton, and fragmentary appendicular skeleton.

In the paper there images of the bones found.

p.s. I too have a hard time believing that the neck in the first image is an exact reconstruction. It's in a japanese museum and I don't know the period/location of the findings there.

So in other words, a rock was found, handed to a paleontologist, and he chipped at it with a chisel, and poof! A bone! Lol

Chuck Norris went back in time after taking a nap in the large hadron collider. Upon awakening and realising his problem, he vented his frustration by uppercutting this beast.

a reply to: yorkshirelad

DJembeJedi is stating the dragon myths arose because people dug up dinosaur skelton heads. Makes perfect sense to me but Sayzaar disagrees.

Boy did I misread that.

originally posted by: sayzaar
What utter nonsense. Looks NOTHING like a dragon. Brontasauras or diplodicus yes, but a dragon.
Total FAIL !

It could have very easily looked like a dragon. We don't have cartilage, skin etc. to see. After all, if you were an alien species who found a fossilized human skull and had seen no other humans, you would never know that we had warts or ears or shapely physics. Appendages don't fossilize. Take a turkey wattle also for example. We don't know exactly what dinosaurs looked like, we can only guess from the skeletons found.

Could this topic help validate Arken's pics of vertebrae on Mars topic, www.abovetopsecret.com... ?


ETA: can you guess what this animal is:



I'll be back later to see if you guessed correctly.

I

Maybe the neck was long so it could feed off the bottom of deeper swamps.

Giraffe's have long necks. They adapt for this by having extra large valves and special blood vessels to store blood as it moved around the veins and arteries.

a reply to: StoutBroux

Is it a koala?

a reply to: Aleister

The neck in the first picture looks way out of proportion from any dino pic I've ever seen or imagined.

It's just an reconstruction by the looks of it, it could be just another sauropod but the artist didn't quite nail it.

Are they sure this is real, and not just a stack of similar but unrelated bones?

It's very rare for a complete skeleton to be recovered, and sometimes only 50 percent of the bones recovered is enough to designate a skeleton to be 'complete' and only a few bones are needed to recreate the rest- a hip bone here, a few vertebrae there...the hip bone itself is enough to determine the species.

originally posted by: skunkape23
I'm guessing that critter would have spent a lot of its time in the water.
A neck that long would have to start aching like a bitch under the gravity of dry land in short time.

and this is why i dont rule out the expanding earth theory

less gravity = bigger bodies