Visitors to Lake Kariba, the world’s largest man-made lake located on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, come to enjoy the rich wildlife, beautiful fishing or spectacular scenery. But in 2017, our team of paleontologists came to Zimbabwe to hunt a different kind of game: dinosaurs.
Many of our discoveries are still being studied, but the team recently announced its first new dinosaur. Musankwa sanyatiensis.
At first glance it is not very remarkable; only a few bones from a single hind leg. He was found with his femur, tibia and ankle bones still connected but weathered on the shores of Spurwing Island. However, after it was cleaned and returned to the laboratory at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, close comparisons with other Late Triassic (235-199 million years ago) dinosaurs from Africa and elsewhere revealed that it had many unique features that marked it. It emerged as a previously unknown species. These features included the shapes and sizes of the areas where the muscles would attach to the bones.
Musankva It is only the fourth dinosaur named from Zimbabwe and the first named from the central Zambezi Basin (northern Zimbabwe, southern Zambia) in 50 years. Although material is lacking, their close relatives were large, bipedal herbivores (plant-eating creatures that walked on two legs) with long necks, small, lightly built skulls, column-like hind legs, and stout tails. Musankva Overall it looked very similar, and calculations (based on its limb bones) show that it weighed 390 kg, about the same as a horse.
Lake Kariba expeditions
Lake Kariba lies at the heart of a large geological feature called the Central Zambezi Basin, which covers northwestern Zimbabwe and extends into neighboring Zambia. This deep, bowl-like structure is filled with thousands of meters of strikingly colored, brick-red mudstones and sandstones deposited by ancient river systems during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic periods (235-176 million years ago).
In the 1970s, pioneering Zimbabwean paleontologists Geoffrey Bond and Michael Raath discovered the remains of a huge dinosaur on one of the islands surrounding the lake. But the remoteness of the area made further work difficult, and they did not return to build on their earlier success. As a result, the region has been overlooked by other dinosaur scientists, although there is clear potential for new discoveries to be made.
A few years later, a small group of fossil detectives led by Steve Edwards, a local safari camp manager, began making new discoveries of teeth and bones around the lake. News of these finds quickly filtered through the close-knit community of South African paleontologists and reached the team at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. After discussions, a plan was made to visit the site in the hope of finding more comprehensive material.
In 2017-18, we were part of a joint team of Zimbabwean, South African and British scientists who organized two expeditions to Lake Kariba using the Musankwa houseboat as our floating laboratory.
The floating boat was crucial to our journey: it allowed us to travel great distances and carry our belongings and finds. It also gave us a safe place to stay; Camping was not allowed in Matusadona National Park due to the large number of elephants, hippos and other animals.
We named our new dinosaur find in honor of our houseboat and the Sanyati River, which flows into the nearby lake. Musankwa sanyatiensis.
ancient discoveries
We used small boats to reach the shore from the houseboat and navigate the winding bays heading inland.
Our days at Lake Kariba involved finding promising patches of bare rock along the shore and exploring them in hopes of finding bones. Fossil bone turned out to be common, and we began to add many new locations to those historically reported.
Although the lakeshore was flat and walking was easy, the temperature and humidity were always high (around 40°C), meaning that even light walks or attempts at digging required working up a sweat. We also had to be alert to the local wildlife we encountered every day, so we spent as much time looking up and around us as we did with our eyes on the ground.
Starting from Steve’s points, we quickly found new material; these included the teeth, jawbones, and armor plates of a crocodile-like aquatic predator called a phytosaur (the first of this group to be discovered in South Africa).
We also found lungfish teeth and dinosaur bones. Detailed geological study revealed that these fossils were deposited in an ancient freshwater swamp; It was surprising that most other fossil sites in this part of the world were found in drier, more arid environments.
unknown pasts
We just discovered Musankwa sanyatiensis The specimen and others currently being studied highlight Zimbabwe’s potential for further new dinosaur discoveries. This helps fill a huge gap in our knowledge about African dinosaurs in general.
We currently know relatively little about dinosaur history in this part of the world; The continent’s size is both a blessing and a curse for paleontologists. But we hope that this work will help mark the beginning of a new chapter in understanding Zimbabwe’s deep past.
Paleontologist Tim Broderick of the Geological Survey of Zimbabwe and Jeremy Prince and Associates, Groundwater Consultants, and Darlington Munyikwa of the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe contributed to the research and this article.
This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent, nonprofit news organization providing facts and authoritative analysis to help you understand our complex world. Written by: Paul Barrett Natural History Museum; Jonah Choiniere, University of Witwatersrand; Kimberley EJ Chapel, University of Witwatersrand; Lara Sciscio, Jurassica Museumand Michel Zondo, University of the Witwatersrand
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Paul Barrett and other authors of this article received funding from GENUS and PAST.
Jonah Choiniere, South African National Research Foundation GENUS (DSI/NRF Center of Excellence in Palaeoscience); and PAST: Paleontological Scientific Trust.
Kimberley EJ Chapelle, South African National Research Foundation GENUS (DSI/NRF Center of Excellence in Palaeoscience); and PAST: Paleontological Scientific Trust.
Lara Sciscio receives funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and has previously received funding from the DSI/NRF Center of Excellence for Palaeoscience.
Michel Zondo works at the Zimbabwe Museum of Natural History. His studies and research have been funded by PAST.