Scientists: "Flying Dragon" used to roam the earth south and north
Scientists in the Atacama Desert in Chile have discovered the fossil remains of the so-called "flying dragon", a Jurassic-era dinosaur previously known to exist only in the northern hemisphere.
The animal, a flying reptile, belongs to a group of the first pterosaurs that existed on Earth 160 million years ago.
It had a long, pointed tail, wings, and sharp, prominent teeth.
It was Osvaldo Rojas, director of the Atacama Desert Museum of Natural History and Culture, who discovered the fossil remains of this creature before they were studied by scientists at the University of Chile.
The discovery is the first of its kind to link these creatures to the southern hemisphere.
"This shows that the spread of organisms from this group (on Earth) is wider than previously known," said Jonathan Alarcon, a scientist at the University of Chile who led the study.
"There are pterosaurs of this group also in Cuba, which appear to be coastal animals, so it is very likely that they migrated north-south, and perhaps once came and settled. We don't know."
The vast Atacama Desert in Chile was once largely submerged in the waters of the Pacific Ocean, but is now characterized by a nature that resembles the surface of the moon, with its rocks and sand.
The region, which has not rained in parts of it for decades, is a promising spot for fossil discoveries that no one has reached in the remote desert areas at not great depths under the sand.
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