A “flying dragon” fossil found in the Chilean desert

Chilean scientists 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, one of the first pterosaurs, was discovered by paleontologists in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

The “dragon”, which roamed the earth 160 million years ago, has a long, pointed tail, sharp, protruding wings and teeth.

The remains, which had only been found in North America, were discovered by Osvaldo Rojas, director of the Atacama Desert Museum of Natural History and Culture.

The discovery suggests a migration of the species between North and South America, which would have been linked in a supercontinent called Gondwana.

“This shows that the distribution of animals in this group was wider than what was known so far,” Jhonatan Alarcon, a University of Chile scientist who led the investigation, told Reuters.

“There are also pterosaurs from this group in Cuba, which were apparently coastal animals, so most likely they migrated between north and south or maybe they came once and stayed, we don’t know. “said Alarcon.

The Atacama Desert has become a hotspot for fossil finds. The arid, Martian landscape was submerged by the waters of the sea in prehistoric times.

Details of the discovery were published in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.

With threads