Entry #3 - February 1st, 2015

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

Feb 1st, 2015

By: Johnny Yu

CNN News

Paleontologists discovered a 50-foot "dragon" dinosaur species in China that may have lived on the earth 160 million years ago during the late Jurassic period. The huge skeleton of the dinosaur was found in 2006 by farmers when they were digging for a fish pond in Qijiang city, which is in the southwestern Chongqing province. Lida Xing, who made the discovery and is in a research team from the University of Alberta, told CNN the dinosaur is named Qijianglong, which means "dragon of Qijiang". He said this is because the farmers thought the bones looked like the shape of Chinese mythical dragons. The finding was published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, and it shows that the new species belongs to a group of dinosaurs called mamenchisaurids. Mamenchisaurids are dinosaurs that had extremely long necks, and sometimes the neck would be as long as half the dinosaur's body. Tetsuto Miyashita, a PhD student at the University of Alberta, also said if you imagine Qijianglong's long neck, you would find that evolution can do quite extraordinary things.The skeleton is currently displayed in a museum in Qijiang, but will be moved to a new dinosaur museum in the city which is still under construction.

My Opinions & Thoughts

It is amazing to see how the scientists have found a brand new dinosaur species that used to live on Earth a long time ago. This discovery also makes me wonder: will there be some other species of long-necked dinosaurs within the area where they found Qijianglong? Or maybe within the continent of Asia? Because if Qijianglong used to live in Qijiang area, then it means that this area probably used to be a natural habitat for long-necked dinosaurs -- the mamenchisaurids. But one thing I am sure about is that the discovery of Qijianglong definitely made us one step closer to understand and picture what Earth was like before we even existed.