Visitors to Lake Kariba – the largest man-made lake in the world, along the Zambia-Zimbabwe border – come to enjoy the abundant wildlife, great fishing and spectacular scenery. However, in 2017, our team of paleontologists came to Zimbabwe to hunt a different kind of game: dinosaurs.
Many of our discoveries are still being studied, but the team just announced its first new dinosaur, called Musankwa sanyatiensis.
At first glance it is inconspicuous: just a few bones from one hind leg. It was found with the femur, tibia and ankle bones still connected, but weathered on the shore of Spurwing Island. However, once it was cleaned and back in the laboratory at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, close comparisons with other Late Triassic (235-199 million years ago) dinosaurs from Africa and elsewhere revealed that it had several unique features had those characteristics. as a previously unknown species. These features include the shapes and sizes of the areas where the muscles would have attached to the bones.
Musankwa is only the fourth dinosaur named after Zimbabwe and the first in 50 years from the mid-Zambezi Basin (Northern Zimbabwe, Southern Zambia). Although the material is incomplete, its closest relatives were large, bipedal herbivores (plant-eating creatures that walked on two legs) with long necks, small, lightly built skulls, pillar-like hind legs, and stout tails. Musankwa would have looked very similar overall, and calculations (based on the bones of the limbs) show that it would have weighed as much as 390 kg – about the same as a horse.
Expeditions to Lake Kariba
Lake Kariba lies at the heart of a vast geological region, the Mid-Zambezi Basin, which covers northwestern Zimbabwe and extends into neighboring Zambia. This deep, bowl-like structure is filled with thousands of meters of strikingly colored, brick-red mudstones and sandstones deposited by ancient river systems during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic (235-176 million years ago).
In the 1970s, pioneering Zimbabwean paleontologists Geoffrey Bond and Michael Raath discovered remains of a huge dinosaur on one of the islands in the lake. But the region’s remoteness made further work difficult, and they did not return to build on their earlier success. As a result, the area was overlooked by other dinosaur scientists, even though there was clear potential for new discoveries.
A few years later, a small group of dedicated fossil sleuths led by Steve Edwards – a local safari camp manager – began making new discoveries of teeth and bones around the lake. News of these finds quickly filtered through the close-knit community of South African palaeontologists and reached the team at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. After consultation, a plan was hatched to visit the area in the hope of finding more complete material.
In 2017-2018 we were part of the joint team of Zimbabwean, South African and British scientists that organized two expeditions to Lake Kariba, using the houseboat Musankwa as our floating laboratory.
The houseboat was essential for our trip: we could travel great distances and transport our belongings and finds. It also gave us a safe place to stay – camping was not allowed in Matusadona National Park due to the large populations of elephants, hippos and other wildlife present.
In honor of our houseboat and the Sanyati River, which flows into the nearby lake, we named our new dinosaur find Musankwa sanyatiensis.
Ancient discoveries
From the houseboat we used small boats to reach the coast and navigate the winding inlets inland.
Our days on Lake Kariba consisted of finding promising stretches of bare rock along the shore and exploring them in the hope of finding flounder. Fossil bone turned out to be common and we began adding many new locations to those historically reported.
Although the lake shore is flat and walking was easy, temperatures and humidity were always high (around 40°C), which meant that even gentle walks or attempts to dig were accompanied by sweating. We also had to be alert to the local wildlife, which we encountered every day, so we often spent as much time looking up and around us as we did with our eyes on the ground.
Starting from the sites Steve identified, we quickly found new material, including the teeth, jawbones and armor plates of a crocodile-like aquatic predator called a phytosaur (the first specimen of this group discovered in southern Africa).
We also found lungfish teeth and dinosaur bones. Detailed geological research has revealed that these fossils were deposited in an ancient freshwater swamp – a surprise considering most other fossil sites in this part of the world were deposited in drier, arid environments.
Unknown histories
Our newly discovered Musankwa sanyatiensis specimens, and others still being studied, highlight Zimbabwe’s potential for more new dinosaur discoveries. This helps fill a major gap in our knowledge of African dinosaurs in general.
Currently, we know relatively little about dinosaur history in this part of the world – the size of the continent is both a blessing and a curse for paleontologists. However, we hope that this work will help mark the beginning of a new chapter in understanding Zimbabwe’s deep past.
Palaeontologist Tim Broderick, of the Zimbabwe Geological Survey and of Jeremy Prince and Associates, Groundwater Consultants, and Darlington Munyikwa, of the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe, contributed to the research and this article.
This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit organization providing facts and trusted analysis to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Paul Barrett, Natural history museum; Jonah Choiniere, University of the Witwatersrand; Kimberley EJ Chapelle, University of the Witwatersrand; Lara Sciscio, Jurassica Museumand Michel Zondo, University of the Witwatersrand
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Paul Barrett and the other authors of this article received funding from GENUS and PAST.
Jonah Choiniere receives funding from the South African National Research Foundation, GENUS: the DSI/NRF Center of Excellence for Palaeosciences; and PAST: the Palaeontological Scientific Trust.
Kimberley EJ Chapelle receives funding from the South African National Research Foundation, GENUS: the DSI/NRF Center of Excellence for Palaeosciences; and PAST: the Palaeontological Scientific Trust.
Lara Sciscio receives funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and has previously received funding from the DSI/NRF Center of Excellence in Palaeosciences.
Michel Zondo works for the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe. His studies and research have been funded by PAST.