Fossil of prehistoric ‘dragon’ — as big as a great white shark — unearthed in Japan

Paleontologists discovered the fossilized remains of an aquatic “dragon” that prowled the Pacific Ocean millions of years ago.

The monstrous predator — which measured as long as a great white shark — belongs to a brand new species, according to a Dec. 12 University of Cincinnati news release.

Takuya Konishi, a paleontologist at the university, came upon the creature’s near perfectly intact fossilized remains in southwestern Japan in 2006.

“It was something I had never seen before,” Konishi said in the news release.

After spending years carefully extracting the fossils from surrounding sandstone, he and other researchers have now described their findings in a study published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

The creature is a type of mosasaur, a family of large marine reptiles that lived up to 100 million years ago, researchers said. Like the Tyrannosaurus rex and most other dinosaurs, it went extinct when a large asteroid struck the Gulf of Mexico 66 million years ago.

Chimera-esque in form, it had a “crocodile-like head,” four “wing-shaped flippers” and a finned tail.

This combination of features is unique, and it’s not clear exactly how they were used together for propulsion and steering.

“We lack any modern analog that has this kind of body morphology — from fish to penguins to sea turtles,” Konishi said in the release. “None has four large flippers they use in conjunction with a tail fin.”

The newfound mosasaur also had extremely good vision which would have allowed it to be a “lethal hunter,” he said.

The mosasaur was given the name Megapterygius wakayamaensis after Wakayama, the Japanese prefecture in which it was discovered.

But researchers have a second, more sensational name for it: Wakayama Soryu, or “blue dragon,” a fitting name as dragons are a part of Japanese folklore.

“In China, dragons make thunder and live in the sky,” Konishi said in the release. “They became aquatic in Japanese mythology.”

The fossilized remains of the “dragon” may be shown in an exhibition in the coming year, Masaaki Ohara, who was involved in the excavation, told the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun.

Mosasaur fossils have been found all over the world, including in Poland, South Africa and the United States.

This story was originally published December 14, 2023 at 2:26 PM with the headline "Fossil of prehistoric ‘dragon’ — as big as a great white shark — unearthed in Japan."