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Massively long neck marks new dinosaur find

Image: Lida Xing, University of Alberta

Image: Lida Xing, University of Alberta


Daniel Martins
Digital Reporter

Friday, January 30, 2015, 4:29 PM - Who says we've already found all the coolest dinosaurs?

The beastie above is "Qijianglong," first unearthed in China and described in a new paper published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology this week, and the artist's rendering does a pretty good job of showing off its best feature.

“Qijianglong is a cool animal. If you imagine a big animal that is half neck, you can see that evolution can do quite extraordinary things,” says Tetsuto Miyashita, a member of the University of Alberta team who discovered the species, in a release.

The university says it was around 15 m long and lived around 160 million years ago. It's a mamenchisaurid, whose fossils have only been found in Asia, marked by their very long necks that can take up 50 per cent of total body length, unlike most other long-necked dinosaurs, whose necks usually take up around a third of their length.

What sets Qijianglong apart, according to the university, is its neck vertebrae, which were filled with air to make it easier to lift. The skeleton also included the head still attached to the neck, which Miyashita says is unusual.

“It is rare to find a head and neck of a long-necked dinosaur together because the head is so small and easily detached after the animal dies,” the researcher says.

The name "Qijianglong" translates as "dragon of Qijiang", a reference to the interior Chinese city where construction workers found the remains in 2006.

The find tells paleontologists an awful lot about this kind of long-necked dinosaur, which Miyashita says thrived in relativel isolation from the rest of the world.

You can read the university's full write-up of the find here, and the original research can be found here.

DINOSAUR CENTRAL: Watch this timelapse of Alberta's Dinosaur Provincial Park:

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