New Dinosaur Species Discovered in Triassic Rocks
London, UK - An incomplete fossil of a previously unrecorded beast has been unearthed in Triassic rocks in Zimbabwe's Mid-Zambezi Basin.
According to SciTech Daily, the discovery was made by a team led by Professor Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum in London, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe, and Stony Brook University (US).
Ancient Giant Roamed the Triassic
The fossil, a partial thigh bone, reveals a completely new species of dinosaur called Musankwa sanyatiensis. This Sauropodomorph, a group of long-necked, bipedal dinosaurs, began to multiply in the late Triassic period.
Sauropodomorphs were the ancestors of the massive Sauropods, the largest dinosaurs to ever walk the Earth. While the multi-ton members of this group became common much later in the Cretaceous period, the new Zimbabwean beast, weighing an estimated 390 kilograms when alive, was among the largest dinosaurs of the Triassic.
Triassic: The Dawn of Dinosaurs
The Triassic period marked the "dawn" of the dinosaurs, with early species being relatively small, some as tiny as geckos. Larger forms began to emerge in the subsequent Jurassic period, before reaching their peak diversity in the Cretaceous.
Musankwa sanyatiensis: Gentle Herbivore
The newly discovered species is named after the Musankwa, the name of the mobile laboratory boat used by the excavation team. Despite its large size compared to contemporaries, it was a gentle herbivore, like its later descendants.
Filling the Gaps in Dinosaur Evolution
Musankwa sanyatiensis adds to a growing list of exciting discoveries about the earliest dinosaurs in Africa. These include some of the oldest known dinosaurs, such as Nyasasaurus parringtoni from Tanzania and Mbiresaurus raathi from Zimbabwe, as well as rich dinosaur faunas from South Africa, Tanzania, Niger, and Morocco.
It also represents a "lost world" of the Triassic, as it lived near the end of a mass extinction event, before a renewed biological explosion 200 million years ago marked the start of the Jurassic period.