Initially discovered during a construction project in central China's Qijiang District nearly 10 years ago, an "elusive vertebrate fossil" apparently shows a "dragon"-like dinosaur with an extremely long neck.

According to the Washington Post, authors of a study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology called the dinosaur Qijanglong, or "dragon of Qijiang." The find could hardly be more significant for a country that mythologizes dragons the way China does.

"China is home to the ancient myths of dragons, I wonder if the ancient Chinese stumbled upon a skeleton of a long-necked dinosaur like Qijianglong and pictured that mythical creature," study co-author Tetsuto Miyashita, a paleontologist at the University of Alberta, said in a press release.

The massively long neck of the Qijianglong was lighter than it appeared and the researchers said it was because the vertebrae were mostly full of air. The study authors also compared it to a construction crane, as it can ascend and descend smoothly, but would have to shift its body to effectively move left to right.

"Qijianglong is a cool animal. If you imagine a big animal that is half-neck, you can see that evolution can do quite extraordinary things," Miyashita said in the release. "Qijianglong shows that long-necked dinosaurs diversified in unique ways in Asia during Jurassic times--something very special was going on in that continent.

"Nowhere else we can find dinosaurs with longer necks than those in China. The new dinosaur tells us that these extreme species thrived in isolation from the rest of the world."