An ancient flying "dragon reptile" that looked like an "Avatar" creatures called Ikran existed on Earth millions of years ago.

The newly found pterosaur is now called Ikrandraco avatar ("draco" is dragon in Latin). Researchers believe the specie stored food in a throat pouch just like the pelican.

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Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates (animals with backbones) to flap wings to fly. They were the biggest animals that ever flew during the Age of Dinosaurs. Pterosaurs wings could expand up to 39 feet.

Researchers studied two partial skeletons of Ikrandraco dating back about 120 million years ago to the Early Cretaceous Period. They discovered the pterosaur fossils in arid hills in north-eastern China's Liaoning province.

A trove of feathered dinosaurs was discovered here, as well over the last decade.

The location in China during the time of the ancient flying reptile had a large freshwater lake. It's warm climate was home to many kinds of animals like fish, turtles, frogs, other pterosaurs, feathered dinosaurs, as well as ferns, cycads, conifers, gingkos, and other flowering plants.

The pterosaur was about 2.3 feet long and had a wingspan of about 4.9 feet. Its skull was elongated and had a unique crest or bladelike bulge of bone on the tip of its lower jaw.

The head of this newfound pterosaur is different from that of any other known pterosaurs, "but similar to [the head on] a flying creature, 'ikran,' in the movie 'Avatar'," said lead researcher Xiaolin Wang, vertebrate paleontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

Ikrandraco's back jaw crest had a little hook-like structure. It acted like an anchor for soft tissue and suggested that pterosaur had a throat pouch like the one a pelican uses to store food, researchers said.

They believed Ikrandraco foraged for food by balancing over water and scooping up prey near the surface.

On the other hand, Wang said that pterosaur is bigger that the modern skimming bird. This explains their irregular skimming, instead usually standing in shallow water to hunt.

Researchers are planning to expand their experiment to check whether Ikrandraco's jaw crest might have supported a throat pouch.

TagsDragon, Ancient Reptile, Pterosaurs, Avatar, Ikran, Age of Dinosaurs, reptile fossils, Fossils