Story highlights A 50-foot long skeleton may reveal a new species of long-necked dinosaur

Neck of the Qijianglong spans half of its body length

Unearthed in 2006 by local farmers, the bones are said to date back to the Late Jurassic period

Hong Kong (CNN) Paleontologists have discovered a 50-foot "dragon" dinosaur species in China that may have roamed the earth 160 million years ago during the Late Jurassic period.

The long skeleton was found in 2006 by farmers digging for a fish pond in Qijiang city in the southwestern Chongqing province.

Lida Xing, a member of the research team from the University of Alberta who made the discovery, told CNN it was named Qijianglong, the "dragon of Qijiang" because farmers thought the bones resembled the shape of Chinese mythical dragons.

The reconstructed skeleton of Qijianglong in Qijiang Museum in China

"We found the dinosaur's huge vertebrae with the skull and the tail, but couldn't find any bones from the hands or the legs. So the locals began to say the long body looked just like a dragon from ancient Chinese stories," said Xing.

The findings, published earlier this week in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, show that the new species belongs to a group of dinosaurs called mamenchisaurids, known for their extremely long necks, which would measure up to half their body length.

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