ANCIENT fossilized remains of a terrifying flying dinosaur have been found in central Argentina.
The beast had a wingspan of over 30 feet – about the size of a school bus.
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Researchers recovered about 40 bones and body fragments of the giant winged dinosaur.
Leonardo Ortiz, the study leader, gave the creature a fittingly foreboding name – “It’s the dragon of death,” Ortiz said.
Like modern-day birds, the dragon of death had hollow bones – but the beast was more like a reptile in that it was cold-blooded.
DailyMail quoted Ortiz saying “We don’t have a current record of any close relative that even has a body modification similar to these beasts.”
Pterosaurs, dinosaurs from the same family as the dragon of death, were among the first creatures after insects to develop powered flight.
Tellingly, the sediments that the newly discovered bones settled in were about 86million years old.
The dinosaurs went extinct 66million years ago when a meteor seven-and-a-half miles wide collided with Earth near the Yucatan Peninsula.
That means the dragon of death was patrolling the skies about 20million years before the dinosaurs’ mass extinction.
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The traits of the dragon of death are so unique it required Ortiz and his team to give the beast a new scientific name.
“Fundamentally, these characteristics are found in the vertebrae and limbs. This allowed us to establish a new species of pterosaur,” Ortiz told USA Today.
They settled on Thanatosdrakon amaru, which combines the Greek words for “death” and “dragon”.
The first dinosaur fossils were discovered and recognized to be prehistoric beasts just 200 years ago in Sussex, England.
Centuries prior, an English chemistry professor found a dinosaur femur bone – he thought it belonged to a giant human.
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