Dinosaur

Oldest African Dinosaur Discovered in Zimbabwe

In August 2022, a dinosaur fossil from over 200 million years ago was found in Zimbabwe, receiving the title of the oldest dinosaur fossil ever found in Africa. The preserved dinosaur is called a sauropod, a type of small dinosaur, and was found along with fossils of other animals that lived simultaneously. This discovery has helped scientists in figuring out where the first dinosaurs evolved. The same types of animals have also been found in places far from Africa, such as Brazil and India. This further proves that when dinosaurs were alive, the land on Earth was arranged differently, and the continents have moved around since. Countries and continents that used to be next to each other now have an ocean between them.

What is a fossil?

A fossil is the remains or imprints of an animal or plant alive long ago and preserved in rock. Scientists that specialize in studying fossils are called palaeontologists. They use fossils, such as the one found recently in Zimbabwe, to learn more about past animals, specifically what those animals looked like, where they lived and what the climate was like.

Have other fossils been found in Africa?

Africa is a continent rich in different types of fossils. Many of Earth’s important life forms, such as bacteria, dinosaurs and humans, first evolved in Africa. The fossil record of Africa includes some of the earliest creatures to live on the bottom of the sea from up to 600 million years ago, some of the earliest types of fish, and many dinosaurs. 

 

As confirmed by the recently found fossil in Zimbabwe, Southern Africa used to be joined to Brazil and India, forming what is known as a supercontinent. This supercontinent was called Gondwana and was home to some of the earliest dinosaurs. For this reason, many dinosaur fossils have been found all over Africa. From dinosaurs that looked like the modern crocodile to the tallest animal to ever live on Earth, many dinosaur species have been, and continue to be, found in Africa.

 

 

Olivia Allen

VIEW ALL POSTS

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function create_function() in /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-content/themes/helpinghands/framework/inc/sd-theme-functions/sd-functions.php:188 Stack trace: #0 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(326): sd_style_tag_cloud() #1 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/plugin.php(205): WP_Hook->apply_filters() #2 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/category-template.php(778): apply_filters() #3 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/widgets/class-wp-widget-tag-cloud.php(60): wp_tag_cloud() #4 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-widget.php(394): WP_Widget_Tag_Cloud->widget() #5 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/widgets.php(837): WP_Widget->display_callback() #6 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-content/themes/helpinghands/sidebar.php(26): dynamic_sidebar() #7 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/template.php(790): require_once('/home/213602.cl...') #8 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/template.php(725): load_template() #9 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/general-template.php(136): locate_template() #10 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-content/themes/helpinghands/single.php(114): get_sidebar() #11 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/template-loader.php(106): include('/home/213602.cl...') #12 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-blog-header.php(19): require_once('/home/213602.cl...') #13 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/index.php(17): require('/home/213602.cl...') #14 {main} thrown in /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-content/themes/helpinghands/framework/inc/sd-theme-functions/sd-functions.php on line 188
WordPress › Error

There has been a critical error on this website.

Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.