Africa’s oldest dinosaur discovered in Zimbabwe
[ad_1]
Scientists in Zimbabwe announced on Thursday 1er September, the discovery of the remains of Africa’s oldest dinosaur, which roamed the Earth around 230 million years ago. Appointed Mbiresaurus raathithe dinosaur was only about a meter tall, with a long tail and weighed up to 30 kg, according to the international team of paleontologists who made the discovery. “He ran on two legs and had a rather small head”Christopher Griffin, the scientist who unearthed the first bone, told AFP on Thursday.
It is probably an omnivore that fed on plants, small animals and insects. The dinosaur belongs to the species Sauropodomorpha, the same lineage that would later include giant long-necked dinosaurs, said Griffin, a 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 whole femur and knew then that it was a dinosaur and that I had the oldest known dinosaur fossil in Africa”, said Griffin, 31, who was then a doctoral student at Virginia Tech University. His team’s findings were first published in the journal Nature Wednesday.
“Exciting discovery”
Dinosaur remains from the same era had previously only been found in South America and India. Paleontologists chose Zimbabwe to dig after calculating that when all the continents were connected into a single landmass known as Pangea, it was at about the same latitude as earlier discoveries made in Latin America modern.
” Mbiresaurus raathi is remarkably similar to some dinosaurs of the same age found in Brazil and Argentina, which reinforces the fact that South America and Africa were part of a continuous landmass”, said Max Langer of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. The dinosaur is named after the Mbire district in northeastern Zimbabwe, where the skeleton was found, and paleontologist Michael Raath, who first reported fossils from this area.
Other specimens have been found in this area, all of which have been deposited in the Zimbabwe Museum of Natural History in the country’s second largest city, Bulawayo.
“The discovery of Mbiresaurus is exciting and special for Zimbabwe and the entire paleontological fieldsaid museum curator Michel Zondo. The fact that the skeleton of Mbiresaurus is nearly complete makes it a perfect reference material for further discoveries. »
To not miss any African news, Subscribe to the newsletter from “World Africa” from this link. Every Saturday at 6 a.m., find a week of news and debates covered by the editorial staff of the “World Africa”.
[ad_2]
Source link
