The surprise discovery of fossils from two dinosaur-related marine reptiles in the world's driest desert provides fresh insights into how the planet we know today came to be, Chilean scientists say. Two genera of the so-called Plesiosauria, which inhabited the world 160 million years ago, have been identified for the first time in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile by a group of researchers from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Chile and the Museum of Natural and Cultural History of the Atacama Desert, they said in study results published on 18th August. The discovery documents the existence of a direct waterway between modern day South America and what is now Europe back in the Upper Jurassic Period when the world still consisted of one big continent, palaeontologist and head of the Chilean research team, Rodrigo Otero, told Real Press in an interview. Mr Otero explained: "The most important thing this discovery leaves us to know is what the geography was like at the end of the Jurassic Period."