Paleontologists have discovered the oldest dinosaur ever found in Africa, and one of the earliest to ever evolve.
Stories are difficult to understand without starting at the beginning, and the story of the dinosaurs’ nearly 200 million-year reign on Earth is no exception.
The researchers hope the fossil can fill in critical gaps in the record.
A sauropod, the animal found in northern Zimbabwe is estimated to have been 6 feet long with a long tail. It weighed anywhere from 20 to 65 pounds, and was missing only some of the hand and portions of the skull.
“These are Africa’s oldest-known definitive dinosaurs, roughly equivalent in age to the oldest dinosaurs found anywhere in the world,” explains Christopher Griffin, a graduate from VA Tech’s School of Geosciences, and member of the excavation.
“The oldest known dinosaurs—from roughly 230 million years ago, the Carnian Stage of the Late Triassic period—are extremely rare and have been recovered from only a few places worldwide, mainly northern Argentina, southern Brazil, and India.”
Mbiresaurus raathi stood on two legs and its head was relatively small head like its dinosaur relatives. It sported small, serrated, triangle-shaped teeth, suggesting that it was an herbivore or potentially omnivore.
Found alongside Mbiresaurus were an assortment of Carnian-aged fossils, including a herrerasaurid dinosaur, early mammal relatives such as cynodonts, armored crocodilian relatives such as aetosaurs, and, in Griffin’s description, “bizarre, archaic reptiles” known as rhynchosaurs, again typically found in South America and India from this same time period.
We must examine the evidence before claiming that life “evolved” from amoebas into dinosaurs. Geneticists tell us that it’s not possible for a one celled amoeba to magically transform itself into a frog, a fish or a dinosaur. An amoeba and its descendants remain amoebas. Indeed, no scientist has been able to create a simple amoeba from any combination of minerals, chemicals, electricity or water. The fossil record for the “Cambrian Explosion of Life” seems to indicate one or more outside influences that involve advanced genetics beyond our current level of scientific technology. So the good news is that we are definitely not the only “intelligent” life in the universe!
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