This picture shows a dinosaur skeleton at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, a national museum of natural history and research center on biodiversity which was voted European museum of the year for 2021, in Leiden on May 7, 2021.<\/p>\n
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AFP) \u2014 A newly discovered dinosaur from Zimbabwe is offering fresh clues to how the animals diversified, suggesting they spread across distinct ecosystems in southern Africa, scientists said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The discovery of the new species,\u00a0named Musango matusadonaensis, is based on a skeleton excavated on\u00a0the shores of\u00a0Lake Kariba in\u00a0northern Zimbabwe in 2018, and is the fifth dinosaur identified from the country, they said.<\/p>\n
It lived about\u00a0210 million years\u00a0ago during the\u00a0Late Triassic, when\u00a0dinosaurs were beginning\u00a0to spread across\u00a0the planet but\u00a0had yet to\u00a0become the dominant\u00a0land animals, said the international\u00a0team of palaeontologists\u00a0behind the discovery.<\/p>\n
Unlike the giant long-necked dinosaurs that evolved millions of years later, Musango was relatively lightly built, about 4.5 metres (15 feet) long\u00a0and weighing an\u00a0estimated 222 kilogrammes (490 pounds)\u00a0\u2014 about\u00a0the weight of\u00a0a fully grown\u00a0pig.<\/p>\n
It\u00a0was named after the local Shona word\u00a0\u201cmusango\u201d, meaning \u201cliving in\u00a0the bush\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil recently, it was assumed that the dinosaurs living across southern Africa were largely the same,\u201d said Paul Barrett, researcher at the Natural History Museum in London.<\/p>\n
The discovery suggests the region was instead made up of several distinct ecosystems, each home to different dinosaur\u00a0species, Barrett said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt suggests that what we\u2019ve found so far is only the tip of the iceberg,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
His team\u2019s findings were published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.<\/p>\n
The fossil is among the most complete dinosaur skeletons of its age found in Zimbabwe, with bones from its spine, ribs, arms, legs and feet preserved.<\/p>\n
Researchers estimated Musango was about eight years old and nearly fully grown when it died. The bones also showed it had recovered from a serious injury or infection.<\/p>\n
While its skull has not been found, researchers believe Musango was probably a herbivore or an\u00a0omnivore, feeding on\u00a0plants growing along\u00a0rivers and streams.<\/p>\n
In 2022, scientists in Zimbabwe discovered the remains of Africa\u2019s oldest dinosaur, which roamed the earth around 230 million years ago.<\/p>\n
The dinosaur, named Mbiresaurus raathi, was only about one metre tall, with a long tail, and weighed up to 30 kilogrammes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This picture shows a dinosaur skeleton at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, a national museum of natural history and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":717233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-717232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/717233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}