On the shores of the fake lake Kariba, a reservoir straddling the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, another new species of dinosaur has been discovered – a new sauropodomorph.
“Sauropodomorph” just means lizard-footed. The earliest sauropodomorphs lived about 230 million years ago and were small, about one or two meters long; weighed about as much as a turkey; and were apparently bipedal. They were omnivores or even possibly actual carnivores, paleontologists believe.
They were relatives of the great giant herbivores of the dinosaur world – the long-necked sauropods that also began to emerge about 230 million years ago, like Diplodocus, or Supersaurus, which reached as much as 34 meters in length (112 feet).
Related Articles
The new sauropodomorph was later, more evolved, and bigger. It lived about 210 million years ago and was about 4.5 meters long, even though it was but a child. Far from its birdlike ancestors, this was the size of a Honda Civic but being dainty, it probably weighed no more than a pig (usually 140-300 kg).
Found on the Zimbabwean side of this manmade lake that was created by building the Kariba Dam across the mighty Zambezi River in the late 1950s, the new sauropodomorph discovered in 2018 and only reported last week in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology has been named Musango matusadonaensis.
Musango is a word in ChiShona meaning “living in the bush,” the team explains. Matusadonaensis, comes from the name of the Matusadona National Park, not far from where the dinosaur had been found.
The poor thing died young, though not an infant; growing up in the flood plains of southern central Africa, it had reached about 8 years of age, paleontologists estimate based on analysis of its leg bone.
It is different from another sauropodomorph previously discovered in Zimbabwe, Musankwa sanyatiensis, which is known from only a partial hind leg. Musango and Musankwa were sister taxons, the team deduced.
Close
Kariba Dam, Zimbabwe. Credit: Rhys Jones
Kariba Dam, Zimbabwe. Credit: Rhys JonesDawn of African Dinosauria
This is the fifth dinosaur find in Zimbabwe and it changes the thinking on life in that part of Triassic and Jurassic Africa, explain Paul Barrett of the University of the Witwatersrand with Darlington Munyikwa of the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe and colleagues in the new paper.
Of the first sauropod discovery in Zimbabwe, that Musankwa, only one hind leg was found. Of Musango, the team found vertebrae, ribs, some leg bones, feet and front and rear pelvic bones. The skull was missing, sadly, leading to the opacity about what it ate, but the team assumes it was probably a plant-eater, either a herbivore or omnivore.
Why think a dinosaur classified among the sauropods, so huge that they’re barely believed to have walked on four legs, is bipedal? It’s a hypothesis, the team acknowledges, based on the inferred postures of its closest relatives, as revealed by their phylogenetic analysis.
The significance of the two mini-sauropod discoveries in Zimbabwe refines our understanding of the Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
“Until recently, it was assumed that the dinosaurs living across southern Africa were largely the same,” Barrett explains. That is probably because so few were found so far. Now the new discoveries show that this region of the supercontinent Gondwana actually comprised a series of smaller ecosystems.
The first dinosaur found in Zimbabwe was in 1969, when the country was still called Rhodesia, and it was named Syntarsus rhodesiensis. It was a coelophysoid theropod, what we might imagine to be a leggy, fleet, slim carnivore. Next, found in 1972, came the discovery of the earliest offshoot from the sauropod tree: Vulcanodon karibaensis, also found on the shores of Lake Kariba. Come this millennium, two were found in quick succession – Mbiresaurus raathi and said Musankwa sanyatiensis. Now we have a new one, Musanga.
What is the lesson? That discovery bias is a thing, dinosaurs were more diverse and wondrous than we knew, the ancestors or at least cousins of Diplodocus and Supersaurus looked more like emaciated turkeys than, say, bus-sized hippos with legs, and that plausibly many more will come to light in southern Africa as the search continues.