This shows what the newly discovered long-necked dinosaur may have looked like. In 2006, that’s exactly what happened when a construction team working in Qijiang District in central China spotted what a new paper published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology called some “elusive vertebrate fossils.” So the local municipality commissioned a wide survey of the area and uncovered an even more remarkable find: a freakishly long-necked “dragon” dinosaur. They called it Qijanglong, which means “dragon of Qijiang.” The size of the beast, which extended 45 feet in length and lived around 160 million years ago, got scientists wondering. “I wonder if the ancient Chinese stumbled upon a skeleton of a long-necked dinosaur like Qijanglong and pictured that mythical creature.” 
 
 Even more mythical was the fact that the dragon’s head was still attached to its bones — strange for a sauropod. "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," explains Miyashita. The new species belongs to a group of dinosaurs called mamenchisaurids, known for their extremely long necks sometimes measuring up to half the length of their bodies. It “is a cool animal,” Miyashita said. “If you imagine a big animal that is half the neck, you can see that evolution can do quite extraordinary things.” 
 
 The surprising thing about the neck was that, despite its size, it was relatively light. Unique among mamenchisaurids, Qijianglong had neck vertebrae that were filled with air, making their necks relatively lightweight despite their enormous size. "Qijianglong shows that long-necked dinosaurs diversified in unique ways in Asia during Jurassic times—something very special was going on in that continent," says Miyashita. “Nowhere else can we find dinosaurs with longer necks than those in China.” 
 
 And this had just about the longest one of them all.
– Scientists are seriously excited about a new long-necked dinosaur species found near China's Qijiang City. For one thing, fossils of the beast, which lived 160 million years ago in the Late Jurassic period, show a skull still attached to its neck—a rare find among dinosaurs like this as "the head is so small and easily detached after the animal dies," a researcher explains. For another, interlocking joints between the vertebrae suggest the dinosaur's neck moved vertically more than sideways, like a construction crane. Dubbed "dragon of Qijiang" or Qijianglong, the dinosaur belongs to the mamenchisaurids group, Phys.org reports. It stretched about 50 feet long, with its neck taking up half that length. University of Alberta paleontologists say Qijianglong was able to support its massive neck because its vertebrae were filled with air, like a bird's, making it relatively lightweight, the Washington Post reports. "Qijianglong shows that long-necked dinosaurs diversified in unique ways in Asia during Jurassic times—something very special was going on in that continent," says a co-author of the paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. He's even curious whether Qijianglong inspired the dragon myths of its homeland. "I wonder if the ancient Chinese stumbled upon a skeleton of a long-necked dinosaur like Qijianglong and pictured that mythical creature." (In contrast, scientists recently found a bunny-sized dinosaur.)