Chinese scientists have discovered an exceptionally preserved skeleton of a marine reptile more than 244 million years ago from the early Middle Triassic period. The discovery in Luoping county, Southwest China's Yunnan Province was published Thursday in Scientific Reports, an online multidisciplinary, open access journal from the publishers of Nature.

The skeleton was discovered during the study of the local ecology over the past decade. Shaped like an aquatic lizard, the Luopingosaurus was a primitive finned dragon in the family Pachycosaurus, said Shang Qinghua, one of the authors of the article, according to a CCTV report.