‘Mbiresaurus raathi’, an early sauropodomorph from Zimbabwe (art by Atuchin)
Including a partially articulated herrerasaurid. Sterling Nesbitt and Christopher Griffin excavating (credit: Murphy Allen) pic.twitter.com/2lJC1f4bjz
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Scientists say the find is part of a huge assemblage of fossils from the Late Triassic that could help us understand how the period's climate influenced the dispersal of early dinosaurs.
Bulawayo24 reported today that the near-complete fossil was the oldest dinosaur fossil found in Africa and had been identified as a species of sauropodomorph, ancestral relatives of the sauropods – the huge, long-necked dinosaurs that walked on four legs.
According to the New Scientist, the dinosaur, “Mbiresaurus raathi”, stood at least a metre tall, ran on two legs, weighed around 30kg and had a small head, a long neck and serrated, leaf-shaped teeth.
It was unearthed on the second day of an expedition to Mbire in the Zambezi Valley in 2017, says Christopher Griffin at Yale University, who found a dinosaur femur sticking out of the ground, dug around it and discovered a hip bone.
The new Zimbabwean fossil discovery comes as Australian agency Invictus prepares to start exploratory drilling for oil and gas throughout parts of the Cabora Bassa Basin, an area where the fossil-rich rocks are deposited.
“I kept digging, got more of the team to help out, and we recovered nearly the entire skeleton,” he says. “The rocks it was found in have been interpreted as a river deposit, and it may have been buried in a small-scale flood.”
Based on the presence of other fossils in the assemblage, the team has dated “M. raathi” to around 230 million years ago, part of the Late Triassic called the Carnian stage.
At that time, Zimbabwe was much further south than it is today, and part of the massive supercontinent Pangaea, writes the New Scientist.com.
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