According to recent research, Zimbabwe was the home of one of the oldest dinosaur species ever found on Earth and the oldest confirmed dinosaur species ever found in Africa.
Mbiresaurs raathi, a 230 million-year-old dinosaur whose neighbors lived in Brazil, has left researchers in awe. The discovery provides fresh insight into the area of dinosaurs. Read out below some of the best facts about the dinosaur!
The Secrets of the Oldest Dinosaur
Back in 2017, researchers started investigating the Pebbly Arkose Formation in northern Zimbabwe. Their efforts unearthed quite the specimen, dubbed Mbiresaurs raathi, a nearly complete skeleton. It was named after ‘Mbire,’ the brave Shona dynasty that previously dominated the area.
The dinosaur is about 230 million years old, one of the oldest dinosaurs ever found on Earth. It’s also a sauropodomorph, a relative of the fantastic and iconic long-necked sauropods like Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus.
More interesting is that M. raathi was around 2 meters (6 feet) long and 0.5 meters (1.5 feet) tall at the hip. Quite impressive, but it would have been dwarfed by subsequent sauropods like the enormous 37 meters (122 feet) Patagotitan.
We’ve known next to nothing about the earliest dinosaurs in Africa, and the discovery of Mbiresaurus changes that, explained Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland; […] It is one of the most important recent dinosaur discoveries anywhere on the planet.
Moreover, M. raathi existed in what is now Zimbabwe during the late Triassic era (252 million to 201 million years ago). Its environment was diverse and home to many other animals than dinosaurs—for example, many armored crocodilians, cynodont protomammals, and strange beaked reptiles known as rhynchosaurs.
M. raathi is currently in Bulawayo’s Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe, where it will serve as an inspiration to the next generations of paleontologists.