Fossilised bones unearthed by a British palaeontologist in colonial Tanzania in the 1930s may be those of the oldest dinosaur ever found, researchers reported on Wednesday.
The bones are either those of the earliest dinosaur or of the closest relative of dinosaurs discovered to date, they said.
A denizen of the Middle Triassic around 243 million years ago, the creature predates all previous dinosaur finds by 10 to 15 million years, the scientists said. The specimen also points to the possible birthplace of these enigmatic species in amega-continent called Pangaea, they added.
Dubbed Nyasasaurus, the putative dino was about three feet high, up to 10 feet in length and had a tail up to five feet long, according to their study. It weighed between 20 and 60 kilos.
“If the newly-named Nyasasaurus parringtoni is not the earliest dinosaur, then it is the closest relative found so far,” said Sterling Nesbitt of the University of Washington.
Nyasasaurus’ name derives from Lake Nyasa –now called Lake Malawi – and from a University of Cambridge palaeontologist, Rex Parrington. His team excavated the six vertebrae and upper arm bone from sediment in the Ruhuhu Valley of southern Tanzania in the early 1930s.
That location, said the authors, backs theories that dinosaurs evolved in the southern portion of the supercontinent of Pangaea, where Earth’s land masses were glommed together before the pieces drifted apart to form continents.
For decades, the Nyasasaurus bones languished and were never formally documented.
Their true importance has only been made clear today, thanks in part to modern scanning technology which compared Parrington’s specimens in London’s Natural History Museum against two other Nyasasaurus bones at the South African Museum in Cape Town
A denizen of the Middle Triassic around 243 million years ago, the creature predates all previous dinosaur finds by 10 to 15 million years, the scientists said. The specimen also points to the possible birthplace of these enigmatic species in amega-continent called Pangaea, they added.
Dubbed Nyasasaurus, the putative dino was about three feet high, up to 10 feet in length and had a tail up to five feet long, according to their study. It weighed between 20 and 60 kilos.
“If the newly-named Nyasasaurus parringtoni is not the earliest dinosaur, then it is the closest relative found so far,” said Sterling Nesbitt of the University of Washington.
Nyasasaurus’ name derives from Lake Nyasa –now called Lake Malawi – and from a University of Cambridge palaeontologist, Rex Parrington. His team excavated the six vertebrae and upper arm bone from sediment in the Ruhuhu Valley of southern Tanzania in the early 1930s.
That location, said the authors, backs theories that dinosaurs evolved in the southern portion of the supercontinent of Pangaea, where Earth’s land masses were glommed together before the pieces drifted apart to form continents.
For decades, the Nyasasaurus bones languished and were never formally documented.
Their true importance has only been made clear today, thanks in part to modern scanning technology which compared Parrington’s specimens in London’s Natural History Museum against two other Nyasasaurus bones at the South African Museum in Cape Town
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