Closest thing to ‘real-life dragon’ lived in Australia more than 105M years ago, researchers find

QUEENSLAND, Australia — New research, published Monday in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, indicates that the closest thing scientists have found to an actual dragon soared across Australia’s skies more than 105 million years ago.

“The new pterosaur, which we named Thapunngaka shawi, would have been a fearsome beast, with a spear-like mouth and a wingspan around seven meters,” Time Richards, a doctoral candidate at the University of Queensland, said in a prepared statement.

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“It would have cast a great shadow over some quivering little dinosaur that wouldn’t have heard it until it was too late,” Richards stated, calling the historic find the “closest thing we have to a real-life dragon.”

In addition to its massive wingspan, the creature boasted a three-foot skull, 40 razor-sharp teeth and a circular crest below its jaw, according to a team, led by Richards, from the Dinosaur Lab in UQ’s School of Biological Sciences that analyzed a jaw fossil found in the northeastern part of the Australian state more than 10 years ago, USA Today reported.

Meanwhile, Richards told The Guardian that the find is particularly extraordinary because pterosaur bones were thin, hollow and fragile, meaning they “don’t preserve well.”

“Most of these things likely fell into the sea on death and were gobbled up by predatory beasts in the sea. A lot of them would never have made it to the seafloor to start that fossilization process,” Richards told the outlet.

Kailah Thorn, a University of Western Australia paleontologist and curator of the Edward de Courcy Clarke Earth Science Museum who was not involved in the study, told The Guardian that this was the third species of pterosaur named since 2007.

The fossil can be seen at the Kronosaurus Korner museum in Richmond, Queensland, USA Today reported.

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