Researchers unearthed the remains of a new species of dinosaur in China with an elongated neck that makes up half its body - somewhat like a giraffe - that could explain the long held belief in dragons.

Paleontologists from the University of Alberta in Canada said if ancient Chinese stumbled upon similar bone fossils, it could have led them to think they were dragons.

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The discovered dinosaur, which included a head still attached to a long neck vertebra, was called Qijianglong. It means "Dragon of Qijiang," named after Qijiang City where the remains were discovered at a construction site in 2006. The skeleton is now housed in a museum in Qijiang.

The find was published recently in the Journal of Vertebrate and credited to prominent paleontologist Philip Currie, together with Tetsuto Miyashita and Lida Xing.

Miyashita said it is rare to find the head still attached to the neck, which only happened in about five per cent of found fossils. The dinosaur's tightly melded spine joints show a rather steady neck that could be easily moved up and down than left to right, just like a building crane.

Researchers said Chinese in the olden days could have gotten the idea of a fire-breathing scaly behemoth with the discovery of dinosaur fossils, adding they would have had a hard time guessing what a long-necked animal like the Qijianglong could be.

They said China's ancient dwellers put the snakes and crocodiles that they were familiar with to imagine legendary, formidable beings like dragons.

Scientists said there are many dinosaur species with elongated necks, but these commonly only make up a third of the body length. The Qijianglong would have had a neck about seven and a half meters high, a species with extreme qualities.

Air filled the neck of the dinosaur to keep the top light. The creature would have lived on land on a diet of plants in the late Jurassic period, around 160 million years ago. Scientists said they probably lived isolated in China because they could not cross an ancient shallow sea around the region.

Tagsdragon dinosaur, Dragon of Qijiang, Long-neck dinosaur