Incredible 50-foot 'dragon' dinosaur unearthed by Chinese farmers

[Omaha Steve]

Source: CNN

By Naomi Ng

Hong Kong (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.

FULL story & video at link.



The reconstructed skeleton of Qijianglong in Qijiang Museum in China


Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/30/asia/china-dragon-dinosaur/

[shenmue]

1. Did it breathe fire?

[forest444]

3. Pity they didn't find it in 2012

The Year of the Dragon.

Mark your calendars for February 19, and make your (Chinese) New Year's resolution to put a little more aside if you can. Tradition has it that Wooden Goat years tend to be lean.

[List left]

5. Chinese dragons don't breathe fire. nt

[Cal33]

9. Especially if they've been dead for millions of years. :)

[William Seger]

13. "Fear dragon"

I had heard somewhere that the Chinese word for dinosaur is the same as the word for dragon. According to Google translation, that isn't quite true. Simplified Chinese for "dragon" is 龙 while "dinosaur" is 恐龙 which is a combination of the characters for "fear" and "dragon."

[Cryptoad]

2. Lying ass Commies.....

the EArth is only 6000 years old!

[forest444]

4. Praise the Lord!

(and pass the loot)

[nxylas]

6. Careful

The use of the word "dragon" in the headline already gives ammunition to the young earth creationists. They maintain that the existence of dragons in mythology and folklore prove that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time.

[Kennah]

7. If Mitch McConnell isn't a dinosaur, then I don't know what is

[greiner3]

11. "If Mitch McConnell isn't a dinosaur..."

Or as Jon Stewart would say, 'a turtle dinosaur'.

[bemildred]

8. Why do they have such long necks? nt

[BumRushDaShow]

10. Probably for the same reason giraffes do

and why elephants have long trunks. The food source for these herbivores is the foliage of very tall trees.

[bemildred]

12. I suppose.

It just seems like it would be easy for something to bite it off too, and awkward to maneuver. That skeleton looks worse than any giraffe.

I've seen various other theories too, but yours is the best, the high food idea, but that is one heck of a long neck there.

[randome]

14. It also doesn't look like a dragon with that long a neck.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Everything is a satellite to some other thing.[/center][/font][hr]

[BumRushDaShow]

19. The European concept/imagery of a dragon was different from the Chinese

European (tended to have wings) -





Chinese -

[randome]

20. I stand corrected.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Everything is a satellite to some other thing.[/center][/font][hr]

[BumRushDaShow]

18. I expect the carnivores were not grazing in the same territory

as the herbivores so you wouldn't have that type of competition for food.

There was a little article on a potential theory about the characteristics of the long neck...

http://www.livescience.com/38895-sauropods-had-stiff-necks.html

[bemildred]

21. Thanks, that's interesting.

[Johnny Rash]

15. They were Vegetarians eating only the very Tree-Top branches of Trees as their main FOOD source.

Most Trees in those days were very enormous and tall, because it was the best DEFENSE mechanism TREES could have in order to escape all those seriously heavy Vegetarians.

Still, I wonder if this IDEA could be used as basic for the Explanation on "why" Evolution choose Carnivores (such as T-Rex) over Vegetarians Dinosaurs?

[bemildred]

16. Yeah, I guess that's what I'm saying, it looks like a dead-end strategy.

Something you'd find on an island or with some sort of arms race. Yet they were around for a long time, I suppose things were different back then.

[Johnny Rash]

17. Hmm, that's for sure!

Maybe the availability produced by a LARGE Land Mass Size could explain the fact they were around for a long time?

[Kennah]

22. Orgies