Enter dragons

It’s the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese calendar and, by coincidence, the discovery of two dragon-like creatures was announced by scientists.

In the Amazon jungle of Ecuador, a new species of snake — the northern green anaconda (Eunectes akayima) — was discovered by a team of scientists from Australia’s University of Queensland, CNN reported.

Snakes are associated with dragons as the latter word is derived from the Latin term draco, which means huge serpent. Both the real and mythical creatures have similar long and scaly bodies.

The northern green anaconda was found by the scientists and local hunters in a river in the Bameno region of Baihuaeri Waorani Territory, according to Professor Bryan Fry, a biologist from the UoQ and leader of the team, according to CNN.

One female anaconda the team encountered measured an astounding 6.3 meters, or 20.7 feet long, Fry said.

Meanwhile, bones and specimens from “a dragon” that were found in a small village in Guizhou Province, Southern China between 2003 and 2013 have been assembled to reveal a new species named Dinocephalosaurus orientalis.

The international team of researchers from Scotland, Germany, the United States and China published their findings in the journal Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, CNN reported.

Though slightly shorter than the 6.3-meter-long anaconda, the 20-footer D. orientalis had 32 vertebrae in the neck area alone, according to Sci News. Paleontologists speculate that the extremely long neck helped the marine reptile catch fish.

Its many vertebrae, also in the torso, gave the animal a much more snake-like appearance. An image of the assembled D. orientalis skeleton, from head to tail, is also “reminiscent of the long and snake-like mythical Chinese Dragon,” according to Sci News.

The D. orientalis lived in China during the Triassic period, around 240 million years ago.