SBU paleontologist part of team tasked with identifying new dinosaur species

Kimberley Chapelle helped discover and identify the find, named Musankwa sanyatiensis

Long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs known as sauropodomorphs – a group of mainly bipedal dinosaurs that lived about 210 million years ago in the Late Triassic – provide a common picture of the age of dinosaurs in the minds of humans. people. Today, a completely new species of sauropodomorph has been identified, which is only the fourth species of dinosaur discovered in Zimbabwe.

Kimberley (Kimi) Chapelle, assistant professor in the Department of Anatomical Sciences at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, is part of an international team of scientists who discovered and identified the discovery, named Musankwa sanyatiensis. An article describing the fossil and details about the dinosaur is published in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. The study is led by Professor Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum in London. Co-authors include Chapel of Stony Brook University and researchers from Wits University in South Africa and the Zimbabwe Natural History Museum.

The discovery of Musankwa sanyatiensis is particularly important because it is the first dinosaur to be named in the middle Zambezi basin of northern Zimbabwe in more than 50 years. The fossil only follows these previous discoveries of dinosaurs in the region: “Syntarse» rhodesiensis in 1969, Vulcanodon karibaensis in 1972 and Mbiresaurus Raathi in 2022.

Musankwa sanyatiensis is represented by the remains of a single hind leg, including the thigh, tibia and ankle bones.

An evolutionary analysis reveals that Musankwa sanyatiensis was a member of the Sauropodomorpha, which were widespread in the late Triassic. The dinosaur appears to be closely related to its contemporaries in South Africa and Argentina. Weighing around 390 kilograms or about 850 pounds, the herbivore Musankwa sanyatiensis was one of the largest dinosaurs of its time. Scientists say the dinosaur lived mainly in swampy areas.

“Despite the limited number of fossils, these bones have unique characteristics that distinguish them from those of other dinosaurs living at the same time,” said Chapelle, who helped excavate the specimen and was present at the site the day it was discovered. Musankwa sanyatiensis was discovered in 2018.

Once the fossil was scanned by micro-CT, she processed the data and carried out digital reconstructions of Musankwa sanyatiensis. Chapelle also helped describe the dinosaur and determine its position on the dinosaur family tree through phylogenetic analysis.

The fossil was named Musankwa sanyatiensis after the “Musankwa” barge. In the Tonga dialect, “Musankwa” means “boy close to marriage”. This vessel served as the research team's home and mobile laboratory during two field expeditions to Lake Kariba in 2017 and 2018.

The discovery highlights the region's untapped potential for new paleontological discoveries

While Africa itself has a long history of dinosaur discoveries, there have been few in Zimbabwe and this region of the continent. Lead author Barrett says the likely reason for this is “undersampling,” because fewer paleontologists have done research in the region compared to other parts of the world.

“Over the past six years, many new fossil sites have been recorded in Zimbabwe, yielding a wide range of prehistoric animals, including the first phytosaurs of sub-Saharan continental Africa (ancient crocodile-like reptiles), metoposaurid amphibians ( giant armored amphibians), lungfish and other reptile remains,” Barrett noted.

“Depending on its position in the dinosaur family tree, Musanwka sanyantiensis is the first dinosaur of its species from Zimbabwe,” added Chapelle. “This therefore highlights the region’s potential for new paleontological discoveries.”

The authors believe that as more fossil sites are explored and excavated, there is hope of discovering other significant discoveries in Zimbabwe and other regions that will shed light on the early evolution of dinosaurs and the ecosystems they inhabited.