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Paul Barrett suspected the bones might belong to something new during the excavation. Because so few dinosaurs had been found in Zimbabwe, the skeleton had a good chance of belonging to an unknown species. But the remains emerging beside Lake Kariba in 2018 did not initially look like a dinosaur.

Based on what they could see in the ground, the researchers identified the animal as a nondinosaurian archosaur, another member of the reptile group that includes dinosaurs and crocodilians. Researchers later freed the bones from the rock, allowing the team to identify the animal.

“There were some features of the hip bones that immediately struck as unusual and we studied the remains in more detail we found further evidence that this was a new dinosaur species,” Paul Barrett, the study’s lead author, told Discover. “It’s always exciting knowing you’re the first person to recognize something that’s literally never been seen by human eyes before.”

The animal has now been named Musango matusadonaensis, a new sauropodomorph that lived about 210 million years ago during the Late Triassic, when dinosaurs were diversifying before becoming dominant in the Jurassic. Together with other recent finds from Zimbabwe, Musango indicates that southern Africa supported distinct dinosaur communities rather than one broadly shared fauna.

Described in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology, Musango becomes only the fifth dinosaur named from Zimbabwe.

New Zimbabwe Dinosaur Species Was Lightly Built

Musango stretched an estimated 15 feet, roughly the length of a car, but weighed only about 490 pounds, similar to a fully grown pig. It likely walked on two legs and belonged to the sauropodomorphs, the dinosaur group that includes long-necked species such as Diplodocus.

Researchers recovered a partial skeleton containing vertebrae, ribs, shoulder and hip bones, and parts of the arms, legs and feet. Its skull is missing, so they cannot determine whether Musango ate only plants or was an omnivore.

It lived in a highly seasonal landscape crossed by rivers and streams, alongside lungfish, crocodile-like phytosaurs and other early dinosaurs.

Musango can mean “living in the bush” in ChiShona, referring to the remote discovery area and nearby Musango Island. The species name matusadonaensis honors the neighboring Matusadona National Park.

A Leg Bone Shows Musango Survived an Earlier Trauma

A thin section taken from Musango’s fibula contained eight growth marks, indicating that the animal was at least eight years old. Its growth had begun to slow, suggesting it was likely a late subadult or an adult approaching its full size when it died.

The fibula also contained reactive bone that may have formed around a fracture or an infection. Researchers cannot say what happened, but normal bone grew over the affected area, and Musango survived and continued growing.

Zimbabwe’s Dinosaurs Challenge an Old Assumption

Researchers once assumed Zimbabwe’s Late Triassic dinosaurs would match species from nearby South Africa. However, researchers have not identified a single dinosaur taxon in both Zimbabwe’s deposits and South Africa’s main Karoo Basin.

“This is pretty surprising as they’re large animals that were presumably capable of covering large distances, and the areas we find the fossils in South Africa and Zimbabwe are relatively close to each other geographically,” Barrett explained to Discover.

Environmental differences may have separated the dinosaur communities. Musango’s region was semi-arid, while comparable South African fossils come from wetter river environments farther south.

Africa’s dinosaur fossil record remains understudied compared with Europe and western North America. The team already has another new species awaiting formal description and has learned of additional fossils from the region that researchers have yet to examine.

“The continent has the potential to supply lots of surprises to our current assumptions about dinosaur evolution as there are many places we’ve yet to look and others where we’ve barely scratched the surface,” Barrett told Discover.