Link to newsround

New dinosaur discovered in Zimbabwe

An illustration of a dinosaur walking on two legs near a stream and some treesMark Witton

An illustration of the Musango matusadonaensis dinosaur

A species of dinosaur discovered in Zimbabwe has revealed new details about the the creatures that lived in southern Africa.

Named Musango matusadonaensis, the 4.5-metre-long dinosaur is just the fifth ever named from the African country.

Discovered on the shore of Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe, it lived 210 million years ago during the Late Triassic period.

Experts say the discovery, which is a collaboration between the UK, South Africa and Zimbabwe, sheds new light on the diversity of the dinosaurs in southern Africa.

The late Triassic was when dinosaurs were beginning to spread around the planet before they became the dominant animals on Earth during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

While sites in Europe and North America have been studied extensively, fossils from Africa have not had as much attention.

At the time Africa would have been part of a supercontinent called Gondwana, that also included present-day South America, India, Australia, and Antarctica.

Musango was a sauropodomorph, an early relative of dinosaurs such as Diplodocus that walked on two legs rather than four.

A study of the fossils of the Musango, which include bones from the spine, arms and feet, reveal a dinosaur which was almost fully grown when it died.

A fossil embedded in reddish-brown groundPaul Barrett

The fossil was discovered by Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe

The researchers say it was about eight years old and would have been around 4.5 metres long, which is about the length of a medium sized car.

The study authors also believe it was an omnivore which means it ate plants and meat.

It probably feasted on crocodile-like phytosaurs and lungfish as well as smaller dinosaurs.

Professor Paul Barrett from the Natural History Museum, London and the lead author of the study published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology says:

"Until recently, it was assumed that the dinosaurs living across southern Africa were largely the same," he explains. "However, these discoveries are showing that this part of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana was actually made of a series of smaller ecosystems – each with a different cast of characters."