The oldest dinosaur in Africa discovered in Zimbabwe | energy and science

Scientists said that it was a type of sauropodomorph, a relative of the sauropod, which walked on all fours. The skeleton was discovered during two expeditions, in 2017 and 2019, to the Zambezi Valley.

“When we talk about the evolution of the first dinosaurs, fossils from the Triassic period are scarce,” said Darlington Munekwa, deputy director of Zimbabwe’s National Museums and Archeology, who was part of the expeditions. BBC.

He said that fossils from that era – which ended more than 200 million years ago – have been discovered in South America, India and now Zimbabwe. He said the discovery is expected to shed more light on the evolution and migration of early dinosaurs, when the world was a huge continent and Zimbabwe was at the same latitude as those countries.

Zimbabwe has known other excavations in the area for decades, and Munikoa said there are more sites that need further exploration in the area, subject to the availability of funding.

“It shows that dinosaurs didn’t start all over the world, they ruled the world from the beginning,” Christopher Griffin, another scientist involved in the trip, told the BBC. “They and the animals they lived with seem to have been restricted to a particular environment farther south – what is now South America, South Africa and India.”