SANTIAGO – Scientists in the Atacama Desert of Chile have unearthed the fossil remains of a so-called “flying dragon”, a Jurassic-era dinosaur that was previously only known in the northern hemisphere.
The flying reptile belonged to a group of early pterosaurs that roamed the earth 160 million years ago. It had a long pointed tail, wings and sharp teeth and outwards.
The fossil remains of the beast were discovered by Osvaldo Rojas, director of the Museum of Natural History and Culture of the Atacama Desert, and were later investigated by scientists at the University of Chile.
Details of the discovery, the first to relate these creatures to the southern hemisphere, were published in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.
“This shows that the distribution of animals in this group was wider than previously known,” said Jhonatan Alarcon, a scientist at the University of Chile who led the research.
The discovery points to close links and possible migrations between the northern and southern hemispheres at a time when it was believed that most of the world’s southern land masses were bound in a supercontinent called Gondwana.
“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 vast Atacama Desert of Chile, once submerged largely under the Pacific Ocean, is now a lunar landscape of sand and stone.
The region, parts of which have not seen rain for decades, is a hot spot for fossil discoveries, with many remains intact in remote areas not far below the desert surface.
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