“Flying dragon’ fossil discovered in Chilean desert
Baku, September 15, AZERTAC
Scientists in Chile have discovered the fossil of a so-called “flying dragon” dinosaur — the first of its kind found in the southern hemisphere.
The Jurassic-era creature, an early pterosaur, was found by paleontologists in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
The “dragon,” which roamed the earth 160 million years ago, has a long pointed tail, wings and sharp, protruding pointed teeth.
The remains, previously only ever found in North America, were unearthed by Osvaldo Rojas, director of the Atacama Desert Museum of Natural History and Culture.
The discovery suggests migration of the species between North and South America which are believed to have been linked in a supercontinent called Gondwana.
“This shows the distribution of the animals in this group was wider than what was known up to now,” Jhonatan Alarcon, a University of Chile scientist who led the investigation, told Reuters.
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