Chilean scientists have discovered the fossil of a dinosaur called a “flying dragon”, the first of its kind found in the southern hemisphere.
Paleontologists found the Jurassic-era creature, an early pterosaur, in the Atacama Desert of Chile.
The “dragon,” which roamed the earth 160 million years ago, has a long pointed tail, sharp, pointed wings and teeth.
The remains, which until now were only found in North America, were unearthed by Osvaldo Rojas, director of the Museum of Natural History and Culture of the Atacama Desert.
The discovery suggests the migration of species between North and South America that are believed to be related in a supercontinent called Gondwana.
“This shows that the distribution of animals in this group was wider than was known until now,” Jhonatan Alarcon, a scientist at the University of Chile who led the research, told Reuters.
“There are pterosaurs of this group also in Cuba, which were apparently coastal animals, so it’s likely that they migrated between north and south or maybe came once and stayed there, we don’t know,” he said. Alarcon.
The Atacama Desert has become a hot spot for discovering fossils. The barren Martian-looking landscape was submerged by seawater in prehistory.
Details of the discovery were published in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.
With cables