Discovery of a new dinosaur that lived 230 million years ago: Dong-A Science

A new type of dinosaur has been discovered in the oldest fossil ever found in Africa. The theory that the Pangaea period was limited by the habitats of the dinosaurs and the climate line, the baseline from which the climate of the period changed, has been proven once again.

An international joint research team, including the Department of Earth Sciences at Virginia Tech and the Zimbabwe Museum of Natural History, published research results in the August 31st edition of the international scientific journal ‘Nature’ which showed that the fossils found in Zimbabwe are the oldest new species of dinosaur in Africa.

The new dinosaur was named Mbiresaurus raathi. This dinosaur was a long-necked sauropod, over 1m tall and weighing around 30kg, and is estimated to have had a small head, long neck and serrated teeth.

Based on other fossils found nearby, the team estimated that this dinosaur lived around 230 million years ago. Zimbabwe, which was then part of the great Pangea in the Late Triassic, was much further south than it is today.

Paleontologists speculate that the climate of Pangea may have changed with latitude. The lower latitudes were dry, and the higher latitudes, including Zimbabwe, had high humidity and abundant vegetation. It is believed that most dinosaurs lived in the temperate climates of southern Pangaea, avoiding the dry deserts.

Christopher Griffin, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Evolutionary Biology at Yale University in the United States, said, “Currently, when a straight line is drawn connecting northern Argentina, southern Brazil and India, it is assumed that the region on the The line has similar climate..

The research team drew a climate line based on the Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe, Africa, where the first fossil was found in 2017, and traced it, finding the second fossil in the Dande region of northern Zimbabwe. Analysis of the two fossils revealed the existence of Mbiresaurus lati.

In fact, the Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe, where the first fossils were found, is an area where dinosaur bones and footprints are often found. This time, a dinosaur that lived much longer than the fossils found so far has been discovered. “Based on the Zimbabwe region, it can be seen that the transition from the early dinosaur period, when the population was small, to a period dominated by dinosaurs,” said postdoctoral researcher Griffin.

Meanwhile, during the two trips, the research team also found results such as Herrerasaurus, a huge carnivorous dinosaur, Cynodont, an ancestor of mammals, and Aitosaurus, an ancestor of crocodiles. In July, a research team from the Department of Life Sciences of George Washington University in the United States published the results of a study that found a new iguanodon (Lyuku raathi) that lived in the late Triassic in the international scientific journal ‘American Anatomy Society’. It is part of the biodiversity that lived in Africa 230 million years ago.

Anusuna Chin-Sammy-Turan, professor of life sciences at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, said: “They are also found in Brazil, India and Argentina around the same time.