NAIROBI
An international team of paleontologists has identified a new dinosaur species in Zimbabwe dating back about 210 million years, a discovery that researchers say provides fresh insights into the early evolution of dinosaurs in southern Africa.
The species, Musango matusadonaensis, was described Wednesday in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology based on fossil remains excavated in 2018 along the shores of Lake Kariba in northern Zimbabwe.
It is only the fifth dinosaur species formally identified from the country.
The 4.5-meter (15-foot) dinosaur lived during the Late Triassic, when dinosaurs were beginning to spread across the planet but had not yet become the dominant land animals. Researchers identified it as an early sauropodomorph — a two-legged ancestor of the giant long-necked dinosaurs that evolved millions of years later, including Diplodocus.
The fossil, discovered by a team of British, Zimbabwean, and South African scientists, is among the most complete dinosaur skeletons of its age found in Zimbabwe, preserving parts of the spine, ribs, limbs, and feet.
Analysis suggests the animal was nearly fully grown when it died and had survived a serious injury or infection earlier in its life.
Lead author Paul Barrett, a merit researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, said the discovery challenges the long-held assumption that dinosaurs living across southern Africa belonged to broadly similar communities. Instead, the findings suggest the region was made up of several distinct ecosystems, each supporting different dinosaur species.
Researchers said the discovery, together with other recent fossil finds from Zimbabwe, highlights how little is known about Africa’s prehistoric past and suggests many more dinosaur species may remain to be uncovered.
