Scientists 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 said.
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 said.
“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.”
He added that the find was the “oldest definitive dinosaur ever found in Africa”.