Agence France-Presse
September 01, 2022
The skeleton of Africa's oldest dinosaur was found during two expeditions in 2017 and 2019
Scientists in Zimbabwe have discovered the remains of Africa's oldest dinosaur, which roamed the earth around 230 million years ago.
The dinosaur, named Mbiresaurus raathi, was only about one metre (3.2 feet) tall, with a long tail, and weighed up to 30 kilograms (66 pounds), according to the international team of paleontologists that made the discovery.
"It ran around on two legs and had a fairly small head," Christopher Griffin, the scientist who unearthed the first bone, told AFP on Thursday.
Probably an omnivore that ate plants, small animals and insects, the dinosaur belongs to the sauropodomorph species, the same linage that would later include giant long-necked dinosaurs, said Griffin, a 31-year-old researcher at Yale University.
The skeleton was found during two expeditions in 2017 and 2019 by a team of researchers from Zimbabwe, Zambia, and the United States.
"I dug out the entire femur and I knew in that moment, that it was a dinosaur and I was holding Africa's oldest known dinosaur fossil," said Griffin, who at the time was a PhD candidate at Virginia Tech University.
His team's findings were first published in journal Nature on Wednesday.
Dinosaurs' remains from the same era had previously been found only in South America and India.
The paleontologists selected the Zimbabwe site for digging after calculating that when all continents were connected in a single land mass known as Pangea, it laid roughly at the same latitude of earlier findings in modern day South America.
"Mbiresaurus raathi is remarkably similar to some dinosaurs of the same age found in Brazil and Argentina, reinforcing that South America and Africa were part of continuous landmass during the Late Triassic," said Max Langer of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil.
The dinosaur is named after the Mbire district, northeast of Zimbabwe, where the skeleton was found, and paleontologist Michael Raath, who first reported fossils in this region.
"What this (discovery) does is it broadens the range that we knew the very first dinosaurs lived in," Griffin said.
Africa's oldest dinosaur found in Zimbabwe
By Shingai Nyoka & Oliver Slow
BBC News, Harare & London
ANDREY ATUCHIN / VIRGINIA TECHScientists have unearthed in Zimbabwe the remains of Africa's oldest dinosaur, which lived more than 230 million years ago.
The Mbiresaurus raathi was one metre tall, ran on two legs and had a long neck and jagged teeth.
Scientists said it was a species of sauropodomorph, a relative of the sauropod, which walked on four legs.
The skeleton was discovered during two expeditions, in 2017 and 2019, to the Zambezi Valley.
"When we talk of the evolution of early dinosaurs, fossils from the Triassic age are rare," Darlington Munyikwa, deputy director of National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe, and who was part of the expeditions, told the BBC.
He said that fossils from that era - which ended more than 200 million years ago - had been unearthed in South America, India and now Zimbabwe.
The find is expected to shed more light on evolution and migration of early dinosaurs, back when the world was one huge continent and Zimbabwe was at the same latitude as those countries, he said.
Zimbabwe has been aware of other fossils in the area for decades and Mr Munyikwa said there were more sites that needed further exploration in the area, subject to funding availability.
"It shows that dinosaurs didn't start out worldwide, ruling the world from the very beginning," Christopher Griffin, another scientist involved in the expedition, told the BBC.
"They, and the animals they lived with, seem to have been constrained to a particular environment in the far south - what is today South America, southern Africa and India."
STEPHEN TOLAN/VIRGINIA TECHHe added that the find was the "oldest definitive dinosaur ever found in Africa".
Prof Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan, a palaeontologist at the University of Cape Town, told the BBC that the discovery was important because it was part of the lineage that gave rise to the sauropod dinosaurs, which includes the diplodocus and the brontosaurus.
"It tells us that when dinosaurs were evolving, they were found on different continents, but they seem to have followed a hot humid environment rather than dry inhospitable one," she told the BBC. "We hope there is more coming out of that area."
She added that the area where the discovery took place had seen recent gas mining exploration.
"I hope that there is a strict policy in place to ensure that if they encounter fossils, they hand them over to the museums, so we don't lose that material," she said.
The near-complete skeleton of the Mbiresaurus raathi is stored in a room in a museum in Zimbabwe's southern city of Bulawayo. It is thought to date to the Carnian stage of the Triassic period, when today's Zimbabwe was part of the massive supercontinent Pangaea.
Dinosaurs were believed to be well adapted to the high latitudes where today's Zimbabwe is located, which were humid and had ample vegetation.
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