A team of scientists has 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 discovery is seen as an important breakthrough because it was part of the lineage that gave rise to the sauropod dinosaurs, which includes the diplodocus and the Brontosaurus.
The skeleton was discovered during two expeditions, in 2017 and 2019, to the Zambezi Valley.
Darlington Munyikwa, deputy director of National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe informed that in the evolutionary history of early dinosaurs, fossils from the Triassic age are rare. He further told that fossils from that era – which ended more than 200 million years ago – had also been unearthed in South America, India, and now Zimbabwe.