An Actual Chinese Dragon
For some reason, I was invited out to the Darwin Ranch to meet the new hand. It was a mite late and the shadows cast by the setting sun at Deception Pass made the going a bit slow. Once I arrived, foreman Rusty Swingset and his assistant Cliff Swallows had me meet Crappie Crankbait. It seems that Crappie is a specialist in aquatic dinosaur-age creatures. He found it interesting that this is the Year of the Dragon according to the Chinese Zodiac, and recent research on a Chinese dinosaur fossil seems to fit right in. Dinocephalosaurus orientalis , Wikimedia Commons / Nobumichi Tamura ( CC BY-SA 3.0 ) (modified) Scientists actually used the word dragon regarding this critter because the long neck is somewhat similar to the long necks in portrayals of Chinese dragons. This is not exactly a new animal, but a few more fossils have been found. Sure does look like a plesiosaur, but paleontologists insist that D. orientalis is not related and lazily invoke " convergent evolution "