The earliest dinosaur skeleton yet recovered in Africa has been discovered by an international team of paleontologists. The skeleton of the plant-eating dinosaur Mbiresaurus raathi was discovered in northern Zimbabwe, according to a press release issued by Virginia Tech on Wednesday. The Mbiresaurus raathi existed about 230 million years ago, according to experts.
The Mbiresaurus raathi was around 6 feet in length, had a lengthy tail, and weighed between 20 and 65 pounds. The Mbiresaurus raathi is classified as a sauropodomorph, or a dinosaur with a long neck.
Reconstruction of the Mbiresaurus raathi dinosaur in the front, with other Zimbabwean animals in the background. It depicts two rhynchosaurs (front right), an aetosaur (front left), and a herrerasaurid dinosaur running after a cynodont (at back right) Andrey Atuchin/Virginia Tech
Christopher Griffin, a student at Virginia Tech, and other paleontologists discovered the skeleton during two digs in Zimbabwe in 2017 and 2019. The multinational team of experts that discovered the skeleton said that just fragments of the hand and head were missing.
Griffin stated in a statement, “The finding of Mbiresaurus raathi fills a significant geographic gap in the fossil record of the earliest dinosaurs and demonstrates the effectiveness of hypothesis-driven fieldwork for verifying predictions about the distant past.”
According to their findings, the Mbiresaurus walked on two legs and had a very tiny skull with triangular teeth that were serrated.
These are Africa’s earliest definitively identified dinosaurs, about equal in age to the oldest dinosaurs discovered anywhere else. Griffin stated. The dinosaurs who lived around 230 million years ago, during the Carnian Period of the Late Triassic, are exceedingly uncommon and have only been discovered in a few of locations throughout the globe, namely northern Argentina, southern Brazil, and India.
Christopher Griffin excavated a portion of the bones of Mbiresaurus raathi in 2017 while wearing a plaster field jacket. Stephen Tolan, of Virginia Tech’s Paleobiology & Geobiology Research Group
The majority of the Mbiresaurus skeleton is being cleaned and analyzed at Derring Hall at Virginia Tech. However, it will ultimately be transported to the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo, along with any other fossils discovered in the region, according to the university.
In a news statement, Michel Zondo, curator and fossil preparation at the museum, said, “The fact that the Mbiresaurus skeleton is almost complete makes it an ideal reference specimen for future discoveries.” “This is the first discovery of a sauropodomorph of this size in Zimbabwe; the most of our sauropodomorph discoveries here are typically of medium- to large-sized animals.”