Oldest dinosaur fossil in Africa discovered

[Prehistory Resurrection]

-Palaeontologists have discovered and named the oldest dinosaur skeleton found yet in Africa in Northern Zimbabwe.

- It is a prosauropod; an ancestor to later sauropod giants like Apatosaurus, Brachiosaurus; among others.

- Its name is Mbiresaurus raathi. Mbiresaurus raathi lived in what is now Zimbabwe during the Carnian age of the Triassic period, approximately 230 million years ago. It was about 1.8 m (6 feet) long and weighed in at 9 to 29.5 kg (20-65 pounds). Mbiresaurus raathi stood on two legs, had a long tail and a relatively small head. It possessed small, serrated, triangle-shaped teeth, suggesting that it was an herbivore or potentially an omnivore.

Life reconstruction of Mbiresaurus raathi(foreground) and in the background, contemporary animals that lived alongside Mbiresaurus which include two rhynchosaurs (front right), an aetosaur; an early armored crocodilian relative(left) and a herrerasaurid dinosaur chasing a cynodont (early mammal relative) (back right). These animals' fossils were found alongside that of Mbiresaurus raathi. Image credit: Andrey Atuchin.

- The find includes the nearly complete skeleton of Mbiresaurus raathi, missing only some of the hand and portions of the skull and was found in the Pebbly Arkose Formation in northern Zimbabwe.

Skeletal anatomy of the Mbiresaurus raathi holotype and paratype. Image credit: Griffin et al.
-The find and research was led by Dr, Chris Griffin, a paleontologist at Yale University and an international team of Zimbabwean, American, Zambian, and Brazilian scientists. "The discovery of Mbiresaurus raathi fills in a critical geographic gap in the fossil record of the oldest dinosaurs and shows the power of hypothesis-driven fieldwork for testing predictions about the ancient past," he said.

-These are Africa's oldest-known definitive dinosaurs, roughly equivalent in age to the oldest dinosaurs found anywhere in the world. The oldest known dinosaurs are extremely rare and have been recovered from only a few places worldwide, mainly northern Argentina, southern Brazil, and India." Dr. Griffin said.

-Early dinosaurs like Mbiresaurus raathi show that the early evolution of dinosaurs is still being written with each new find and the rise of dinosaurs was far more complicated than previously predicted", said Dr. Sterling Nesbitt, a paleontologist at Virginia Tech.

[VD231991]

The first record of a Triassic dinosaur from Zimbabwe was actually published by Raath et al. (1992) and Raath (1996), who briefly describe a proximal femur of a basal sauropodomorph. It is probable that this specimen is referrable to Mbiresaurus given its sauropodomorph nature.

Raath, M. A., Oesterlen, P. M., and Kitching, J. W., 1992. First record of Triassic Rhynchosauria (Reptilia: Diapsida) from the Lower Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe. Palaeontologia Africana 29: 1–10.

Raath, M.A., 1996, Earliest evidence of dinosaurs from central Gondwana. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 39: 703-709.

[Halichoeres]

That's a pretty decent chunk of the skeleton. Now if we could get a figure of this, or Massospondylus, or Anchisaurus, or Mussaurus, or...

[ceratopsian]

Indeed. There is a gaping sauropodomorph-shaped hole in what is available for our collections. They are not a popular group with resin artists either.

That's a pretty decent chunk of the skeleton. Now if we could get a figure of this, or Massospondylus, or Anchisaurus, or Mussaurus, or...

[Newt]

Very interesting that there are Carnian dinosaurs in Africa...not surprising, but interesting nonetheless. It seems all of Gondwana served as the dinosaur cradle, not South America alone. This makes me wonder if Africa will produce any Triassic ornithischians to join lonely little Pisanosaurus (if it even is an ornithischian and not a dinosauriform). They had to have been somewhere!

I will join the prosauropod chorus. I don't even like any of the Plateosaurus toys I've seen, and there's not much else. Melanorosaurus or Sarahsaurus would be sweet. So would any of the basal sauropods and near-sauropods like Antetonitrus, Vulcanodon, Barapasaurus (Scheich's doesn't count), Tazoudasaurus, etc. 

[Halichoeres]

I'm pulling for Antetonitrus specifically just because the name really rolls off the tongue!

[Newt]

It does! Although it really sounds more like something from an Elizabethan apothecary's recipe book than the name of an animal. 

"Combineth thou four Drams Tincture of Antetonitrus with an Dozen Graines of Yellow Saltpetre and two Drams Juice of Medlar, stilled six Months or more, in the Bladder of an Ewe which hath been slaughtered under the new Moone. This Elixir may be drunk solved in Brandy for Relief of an Excess of Choler, or put to the Skin to eliminate Carbuncle. Also wondrous fair for removing Tarnish from fine Silver."

[Halichoeres]

What a delectable tincture!   

[Loon]

I'm generally an idiot when it comes to this stuff, but I gotta say that I genuinely love how prosauropods look like the aliens from Laserblast.