An international team of paleontologists very early discovered and “christened” a hitherto unknown dinosaurMbiresaurus raathi, which is the oldest found to date in Africawhere he lived about 230 million years ago. His skeleton was unexpectedly found virtually intact in northern Zimbabwe.

This is a small dinosaur with a long tail, which reached a length of about two meters and had a weight of 10 to 30 kilograms. Mbirezaur stood on two legs and had a relatively small head with small triangular teeth. He was probably a herbivore or omnivore.

researchers from the US, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Brazil, led by Dr. Christopher Griffin of the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech, who published in the journal Nature, said “the discovery closes a critical geographic gap in the fossil record of the earliest dinosaurs.”

Griffin said: “This is the oldest known dinosaur from Africa, about the same age as the oldest dinosaurs found in other parts of the world. The oldest known dinosaurs, which lived about 230 million years ago in the late Triassic period, are extremely rare and have only been found in a few parts of the world, mainly in northern Argentina, southern Brazil and India. “We never expected to find such a complete and well-preserved skeleton of an ancient early dinosaur.”

Its name is due to the fact that Mbire is the name of the area where the ancient animal was discovered, as well as the name of the historical dynasty that ruled it in the past. Raathi was named after paleontologist Michael Raath, who first discovered fossils in northern Zimbabwe.

Africa, like all continents, was once part of the supercontinent Pangea. The first dinosaurs were – due to climate – initially limited to southern Pangea, and only later in their history did they spread more widely.

The Mbiresaur fossil is temporarily held at Virginia Tech, where it was cleaned and studied, but will then be permanently moved to the Zimbabwe Museum of Natural History.

^{Source: APE-MEB}