Scientists can now paint a picture of what a ‘strange marine reptile’ looked like 240 million years ago, thanks to some newly discovered fossils .
The National Museums of Scotland announced on Friday that an international team of researchers had succeeded for the first time in “depicting a bizarre long-necked creature” named Dinocephalosaurus orientalis.
This aquatic reptile, believed to have lived in the Triassic period of China, has been on the radar of scientists since 2003, but now a more complete specimen, including one fully articulated fossil, has been discovered. , we had the opportunity to get a complete picture of this creature.
Dr Nick Fraser, director of natural sciences at the National Museum of Scotland, said the fossil helped scientists obtain a “beautiful complete specimen from snout to tail”. CNN. “It’s curled up in a figure eight like this…it’s very reminiscent of a Chinese dragon.”
The bones were first discovered over 10 years ago.
The fragments, later identified as Dinocephalosaurus orientalis, were first discovered by Li Chun, a professor at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, according to CNN.
Fraser told CNN that Chun was visiting a village in southwestern China’s Guizhou province when he noticed a small vertebrae inside a slab of limestone. He found other bone fragments in a nearby pigpen and pieced the pieces together to discover the new species, CNN reported.
