Remnants of Ancient Roman Turret Discovered at Hadrian’s Wall in England
Remnants of a turret from Hadrian’s Wall were unearthed by archaeologists during construction work for student accommodations in Ouseburn, near Newcastle, England.
Turret 3a at Hadrian’s Wall in Ouseburn, near Newcastle, England, 2022.
Hadrian’s Wall was a defensive fortification that spanned 73 miles across Roman Britain. Sixteen stone forts were built every 1,000 paces, with 80-mile castles, turrets and 6 supply forts set in between.
Construction along the Stonegate Road route began in 122 CE and took seven years to complete.
The turret is the only known example of its kind found east of Newcastle. Additionally, the team uncovered a walled ditch and six berm obstacle pits. The finds were announced on Wednesday in a press release by Pre-Construct Archaeology.
Turret 3a, as the structure is now known, is roughly 39 feet long, with foundations that run as long as 8 feet wide.
No remnants of clay or flagged floor surface were found within the structure, and the archaeologists said this loss may have resulted from construction or levelling undertaken during the 19th or 20th century.
They did, however, find a single fragment of a tegula, a tile used in roofing by Romans, among the foundations of the northern wall.
Six shallow pits recorded within the berm, the area between the wall and the wall ditch, would have held cippi, or sharpened branches.
Scott Vance, the site director for the find, said the discovery “has demonstrated that the potential for significant archaeological remains relating to Hadrian’s Wall can survive in the more built-up areas of urban Tyneside.”
The proposed student accommodations will be designed around the turret, which will be preserved.
Hundreds of Monumental “Kites” Spotted in the Arabian Desert
Oxford archaeologists discover monumental evidence of prehistoric hunting across Arabian desert
Archaeologists at the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology have used satellite imagery to identify and map over 350 monumental hunting structures known as ‘kites’ across northern Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq – most of which had never been previously documented.
Led by Dr Michael Fradley, a team of researchers in the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project used a range of open-source satellite imagery to carefully study the region around the eastern Nafud desert, an area little studied in the past. The surprising results, published in the journal The Holocene, have the potential to change our understanding of prehistoric connections and climate change across the Middle East.
Termed kites by early aircraft pilots, these structures consist of low stone walls making up a head enclosure and a number of guiding walls, sometimes kilometres long. They are believed to have been used to guide games such as gazelles into an area where they could be captured or killed. There is evidence that these structures may date back as far as 8,000 BCE in the Neolithic period.
Kites cannot be observed easily from the ground, however, the advent of commercial satellite imagery and platforms such as Google Earth have enabled recent discoveries of new distributions.
While these structures were already well-known from eastern Jordan and adjoining areas in southern Syria, these latest results take the known distribution over 400km further east across northern Saudi Arabia, with some also identified in southern Iraq for the first time.
Dr Fradley said: ‘The structures we found displayed evidence of complex, careful design. In terms of size, the ‘heads’ of the kites can be over 100 metres wide, but the guiding walls (the ’strings’ of the kite) which we currently think gazelle and other games would follow to the kite heads can be incredibly long. In some of these new examples, the surviving portion of walls run in almost straight lines for over 4 kilometres, often over very varied topography. This shows an incredible level of ability in how these structures were designed and built.’
Evidence suggests considerable resources would have had to be coordinated to build, maintain, and rebuild the kites over generations, combined with hunting and returning butchered remains to settlements or camps for further preservation.
The researchers suggest that their exaggerated scale and form may be an expression of status, identity and territoriality. Appearances of the kites in rock art found in Jordan suggest they had an important place within the symbolic and ritual spheres of Neolithic peoples in the region.
Desert kite research is a very active field just now – Michael and colleagues explore a significant extension to their distribution pattern, which has major implications for our understanding of the relationship of the kite builders with new mobile pastoralists and the occupation of the region.
Bill Finlayson, Director of EAMENA and Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Oxford
From the design of the kite heads to the careful runs of guiding walls over long distances, these structures contrast markedly in scale with any other evidence of architecture from the early Holocene period.
The researchers suggest that the builders of these kites dwelt in temporary structures made from organic materials that have left no trace visible on current satellite imagery data.
These new sites suggest a previously unknown level of connection right across northern Arabia at the time they were built. They raise exciting questions about who built these structures, who the hunted game was intended to feed, and how the people were able to not only survive but also invest in these monumental structures.
In the context of this new connectedness, the distribution of the star-shaped kites now provides the first direct evidence of contact through, rather than around, the Nafud desert. This underlines the important of areas that are now desert under more favourable climatic conditions in enabling the movement of humans and wildlife. It is thought the kites were built during a wetter, greener climatic period known as the Holocene Humid Period (between around 9000 and 4000 BCE).
The largest number of kites were built on the Al Labbah plateau in the Nafud desert, where the absence of later Bronze Age burial monuments suggests that a shift into a drier period meant some of these areas became too marginal to support the communities once using these landscapes, with game species also potentially displaced by climate change.
Whether the patterns of kite construction over space and time represent the movement of ideas or people, or even the direction of that movement, remain questions to be answered.
The project, supported by the Arcadia Fund, is now extending its survey work across these now arid zones to further develop our understanding of these landscapes and the effect of climate change.
The study Following the herds? A new distribution of hunting kites in Southwest Asia is published in The Holocene.
Distribution of kite structures in the Levant and in northern Arabia. White: previously documented kites. Red: kites recorded by EAMENA.
Traces of Native American Village Found in Florida
An archaeological bonanza is being unearthed in St. Augustine. This dig is revealing that a Native American village could be bigger — or at least in a different place — than previously imagined.
That same site would later become one of the state’s first commercial orange groves. Some people may be familiar with the site on Bridge Street, where an old blue house stands crumbling and vegetation has taken over.
However, in the last few months, the house has been sold and is being restored.
According to a First Coast News report, St. Augustine city archaeologist Andrea White and her colleagues have found pottery and postholes from Palica, a Native American village, under a nineteenth-century house in St. Augustine’s Lincolnville neighbourhood.
What most people these days don’t see are the archaeologists on the site. They’ve been working in the backyard and even under the house.
“It’s one of the first opportunities any archaeologists have had to work at this location,” said Andrea White, St. Augustine City Archaeologist.
She and St. Augustine Research and Collections Archaeologist Katherine Sims, along with some archaeology volunteers, have been carefully studying the site.
The house restoration and archaeological dig are revealing some surprises. One of those surprises is the mission site of the Native American village called Palica.
“It was only mapped once,” Sims said.
That was in the 1700s.
Later, archaeologists compiled maps and thought Palica was elsewhere in St. Augustine’s Lincolnville neighbourhood.
“When we started this project, we didn’t anticipate finding deposits from Palica on this property,” Sims said. “Once we started work, we immediately realized there is definitely Palica material here! Yes, it was a huge surprise.”
Before the house was built, Native Americans lived here on a Catholic mission site in the early 1700s. Archaeologists have found pottery, but the big find was under the floor of the house where archaeologists found post holes.
Those are basically evidence of a Native American building, and that’s a big deal.
“These all date to Palica,” White said. “We are 100 per cent confident about the age of these. We’re really excited!”
Archaeologists believe the Palica mission was abandoned in the mid-1700s and 50 to 100 years later, the first part of this house was built. It was part of the Yallaha plantation which was one of Florida’s first commercial orange groves.
Some of the original structure is still part of the house. That original portion date to the early 1800s. The house is being restored, but old parts are being salvaged such as roof shingles that are stamped “Florida” on the underside from the 1800s.
Because the house was built a couple of feet above the ground, the house became a protector of the archaeological artefacts on the ground.
“What’s great about a historic structure is that normally people don’t’ go built something under a house, so it helps preserve everything,” White said.
That includes another surprise under the floor. Archaeologists found a donkey burial, estimated to be from the late 1700s before the house was built.
Laid with respect, not just tossed into the ground, it’s easy to think the animal was possibly someone’s hard-working farm animal during the land’s agricultural time period.
And so this house and this land are still relinquishing secrets about a story hundreds of years old.
What is the roman dodecahedron? the mystery is still unsolved
Archaeologists are rarely stumped when it comes to figuring out the purpose of the Roman artefacts they unearth. However, the Roman dodecahedron has everyone baffled. Over 100 of these hollow, knobby, metallic polyhedrons with 12 sides have surfaced at excavation sites mostly around central Europe. At present, there is no definitive answer to their function or purpose.
This Roman dodecahedron derives from the 2nd or 3rd century in Stuttgart, Germany.
The enigmatic geometric forms consist of copper alloy. They range in size from 4 cm to 11 cm, and each of the 12 pentagonal faces contains a circular hole. Oddly, the diameters of the holes are not identical in a single dodecahedron. They also vary from one dodecahedron to another. All of the Roman dodecahedra have five globular knobs at the vertices of the pentagonal faces. The variations in dimensions and designs of the dodecahedra, in addition to their holes, are perplexing.
Discoveries of Roman Dodecahedra
Some dodecahedra surfaced in the antiquities market and, therefore, lacked archaeological context. Others emerged in controlled, scientific excavations.
Archaeologists unearthed the southernmost Roman dodecahedron at Arles in France. The northwesternmost example comes from a site on Hadrian’s Wall in Northern Britain. Yet another piece comes from Bordeaux. Additionally, they have also surfaced as far east as Vienna and Zagreb.
There is a distinct lack of consistency in the archaeological context of the cast dodecahedra. Roman military camps, public baths, and temples have contained samples. Dodecahedra surfaced in a Roman theatre, a tomb, and a well that contained numerous discarded items. Several also turned up in coin hoards, suggesting that they were valued objects.
Even an analysis of the layers of dirt around excavation sites from the second to the fourth century CE provides no clues. As a result, these variations in the discoveries have confounded those attempting to clarify their function. Additionally, a complete absence of any mention of them in Roman texts adds to their mystery.
Two dodecahedra and one icosahedron 3rd century CE.
What Was the Function of a Dodecahedron?
From the first report of a dodecahedron in 1739 until today, over two hundred archaeologists, historians, mathematicians, and hobbyists have put forth theories on the purpose of these bizarre objects.
Cosmic or Astrological
Dodecahedra, for the most part, originate in Gallo-Roman lands where Roman culture overlayed an indigenous ancient Celtic civilization. Therefore, several theories involve mysticism. Some propose that the dodecahedra had a religious function with the twelve holes symbolizing cosmic phenomena. Others suggest that they had a talismanic role. However, since they are too large to suspend form the neck, perhaps they dangled from a belt. Alternatively, they could have fit nicely into a leather purse.
A more likely supposition is that they served some function in astronomical calculations. Perhaps they sat on a flat surface or leaned on a stick.
According to this hypothesis, a dodecahedron could align with the sun, which would shine through two holes at a specific time of day in a particular season. The proponents of this theory used complicated mathematical calculations to show that a dodecahedron could predict astronomical events. In his article, The Hypothesis, G.M.C. Wagemans used a series of estimates showing that several dodecahedra could calculate the best time for planting winter grain in specific locations in Northern Europe.
Some skeptics refute mathematical/astronomical theories. They conclude that the differences in hole sizes and the overall size of Roman dodecahedra prove that they cannot have been used to calculate astronomical phenomena. The same goes for the theory that the metal dodecahedron served as a modern-day theodolite for measuring distances required in land surveying.
Dodecahedron from Thermae.
Divinations
Other theorists have advanced more straightforward ideas concerning the function of the Roman dodecahedron. Some have said it was useful for soothsaying or divination where seers tossed the metal object and read it like a die. However, the fact that the sides bear no written inscriptions or symbols militates against this purpose. Rolling or tossing a Roman dodecahedron would have been almost impossible because of the protruding knobs. Therefore, it is unlikely to have been a divination tool or an object used in a game.
Candlestick Holder?
Because traces of wax exist in some dodecahedra, researchers have proposed that they were candleholders. However, many experts have dismissed this notion for two reasons. First, the wax residue is probably a remnant of the lost wax process used in casting. Second, if these items were candlestick holders, why haven’t archaeologists found a single example in Italy or regions of the Roman Empire around the Mediterranean? The distinct geographical area of dodecahedra discoveries makes the mysterious items unique within the vast world of Roman archaeology. In contrast, other types and models of bronze castings are ubiquitous throughout the Empire.
Knitter?
Among the theories that hobbyists have proposed, the most ingenious involves the use of a dodecahedron to crochet or knit a wool glove. A talented student recently made a Roman dodecahedron 3-D print of one and worked a glove on it. Subsequently, the student recorded the process in a YouTube video.
The idea of making a winter hand-covering on a Roman dodecahedron fits nicely with the wintry geographical discovery sites. Additionally, maybe the different sizes of the holes on the faces correspond to various fingers on a glove.
Decoration?
Perhaps the Roman dodecahedron served as nothing other than decoration. One could imagine that the odd piece suspended from a rope on a belt may have added a bit of swagger to a costume. Similar polyhedral decorative beads with globular protrusions surfaced in sites dating to the 3rd and 4th centuries BCE in Southeast Asia. However, the idea that Roman dodecahedra were merely decorative does not take into account the inconsistent sizes of the circular holes.
Will anyone ever solve the puzzle of the function of the Roman dodecahedron? Judging from the many theories over the last two hundred years, the solution to the enigma may prove to be elusive.
5000-year-old ‘graveyard of giants’ found in a Chinese village
Archaeologists in China have discovered a 5000-year-old graveyard of abnormally tall people who used to live in the country’s Shandong province. The skeletal remains measured over six feet in height.
An archaeological excavation at Jiaojia village in Jinan City’s Zhangqiu District has uncovered 104 houses, 205 graves, and 20 sacrificial pits, according to Xinhua.
Pottery and various objects made with jade were also unearthed during the dig.
The Late Neolithic site uncovered in China dates back to a time when the Yellow River Valley was inhabited by the Longshan Culture, also known as the Black Pottery Culture, which was popular in the region from 3000 to 1900 BC.
The archaeological dig, initiated last year, was led by the University of Shandong.
Grave of giants unearthed in ChinaUNIVERSITY OF SHANDONG
An analysis of the skeletal remains suggests the ancient people living in the region were unusually tall, Xinhua reported.
The findings said the tallest individual found in the grave was a male who measured 6’3″.
According to prior studies, the Neolithic males typically measure around 5’5″ and the females around 5’1″.
The researchers attributed the unusual height to genetics and environment.
Lead archaeologist Fang Hui, while speaking to Xinhua, said the Late Neolithic civilisation engaged in agriculture, therefore the villagers in the region had access to a variety of nutritious food which could have added to their overall physical growth.
Pottery unearthed in the archaeological dig
“I suspect that this big game specialisation associated with a surplus of high-quality proteins and low population density created environmental conditions leading to the selection of exceptionally tall males,” said the study’s lead author Pavel Grasgruber in an interview with Seeker.
The tallest of the Longshan men were found in tombs, which the Shandong archaeologists said was because of their higher social status and access to better food.
31,000-year-old skeleton missing lower left leg is earliest known evidence of surgery, experts say
Australian and Indonesian archaeologists stumbled upon the skeletal remains of a young hunter-gatherer whose lower leg was amputated by a skilled surgeon 31,000 years ago.
A 31,000-year-old skeleton missing its lower left leg and found in a remote Indonesian cave is believed to be the earliest known evidence of surgery, according to a peer-reviewed study that experts say rewrites understanding of human history.
An expedition team led by Australian and Indonesian archaeologists stumbled upon the skeletal remains while excavating a limestone cave in East Kalimantan, Borneo looking for ancient rock art in 2020.
The finding turned out to be evidence of the earliest known surgical amputation, pre-dating other discoveries of complex medical procedures across Eurasia by tens of thousands of years.
By measuring the ages of a tooth and burial sediment using radioisotope dating, the scientists estimated the remains to be about 31,000 years old.
Palaeopathological analysis of the remains revealed bony growths on the lower left leg indicative of healing and suggesting the leg was surgically amputated several years before burial.
Dr Tim Maloney, a research fellow at Australia’s Griffith University who oversaw the excavation, said the discovery was an “absolute dream for an archaeologist”.
View of the archaeological excavation at Liang Tebo cave which unearthed the 31,000-year-old skeletal remains.
He said the research team, which included scientists from the Indonesian Institution for Archaeology and Conservation, was examining ancient cultural deposits when they crossed stone markers in the ground revealing a burial site.
After 11 days of excavation, they found the skeleton of a young hunter-gatherer with a healed stump where its lower left leg and foot had been severed. Maloney said the nature of the healing, including the clean stump, showed it was caused by amputation and not an accident or animal attack.
“[The hunter] survived not just as a child, but as an adult amputee in this rainforest environment,” Maloney said. “Importantly, not only does [the stump] lack infection, but it also lacks distinctive crushing.”
Archaeologists at work in Liang Tebo cave in the remote Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat region of East Kalimantan.
Prior to this discovery, Maloney said it had been widely accepted that amputation was a guaranteed death sentence until about 10,000 years ago, when surgical procedures advanced with the development of large settled agricultural societies.
The previous oldest evidence of a successful amputation was a 7,000-year-old skeleton of an elderly farmer from stone age France. His left arm was amputated above the elbow.
The skeletal remains showing the amputated lower left leg.
“This finding very much changes the known history of medical intervention and knowledge of humanity,” Maloney said.
“It implies that early people … had mastered complex surgical procedures allowing this person to survive after the removal of a foot and leg.”
Maloney said the stone age surgeon must have had detailed knowledge of anatomy, including veins, vessels and nerves, to avoid causing fatal blood loss and infection.
He said the successful operation suggested some form of intensive care, including regular disinfection post-operation.
Emeritus Prof Matthew Spriggs of the Australian National University School of Archaeology and Anthropology, who was not involved in the study, said the discovery was “an important rewrite of our species history” that “underlines yet again that our ancestors were as smart as we are, with or without the technologies we take for granted today”.
Spriggs said it should not be surprising that stone age people could have developed an understanding of the internal workings of mammals through hunting, and had treatments for infection and injury.
“We tend to forget that modern humans like us 30,000 years ago … would have had their intellectuals, their doctors, their inventors,” he said.
He said they would have had to experiment with plant medicines and other treatments to stay alive.
“Any inhabitants of tropical rainforests today, usually now mixing hunting and gathering with forms of agriculture, have a large pharmacopoeia that would have to have been developed over millennia.”
Eerie ‘yellow brick road’ to Atlantis was discovered atop an ancient undersea mountain
A team of marine biologists realized they definitely weren’t in Kansas anymore after discovering what appeared to be a yellow brick road on top of an undersea mountain near Hawaii.
“The yellow brick road?” a scientist mused in a YouTube video of the discovery.
Others remarked that the rocks were reminiscent of a very different fictional world: “It’s the road to Atlantis,” one researcher said.
The yellow rocks, divided from each other at neat 90-degree angles, form a narrow strip and look like they were carved and arranged by human hands. However, the seemingly paved roadway was simply the natural result of ancient volcanic activity thousands of feet below the water’s surface, the researchers said in a description below the video.
“At the summit of Nootka Seamount, the team spotted a ‘dried lake bed’ formation, now IDed as a fractured flow of hyaloclastite rock (a volcanic rock formed in high-energy eruptions where many rock fragments settle to the seabed),” the researchers wrote.
The remarkably brick-like divisions between the rocks are likely the coincidental result of heating and cooling stresses from multiple volcanic eruptions over millions of years, the team added.
The researchers took a detour down this eerie undersea road while piloting a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) around the Papahānaumokuakea Marine National Monument, a protected conservation area encompassing about 582,578 square miles (1,508,870 square kilometres) of the Pacific Ocean northwest of Hawaii.
The expedition is part of the Ocean Exploration Trust’s Nautilus Exploration Program and aims to investigate the ancient seamounts near Liliʻuokalani Ridge, at the monument’s western edge.
One of the team’s main goals is to collect geological samples from the area’s seamounts — underwater mountains formed by volcanic activity — to better understand their ages and origins.
Learning this may also yield new insights into the formation of the Hawaiian Islands, the researchers wrote on the Nautilus website. The team will also collect microbial samples, to study what kinds of oddball organisms have managed to thrive near the deep, underwater volcanoes of the Pacific.
“Our exploration of this never-before-surveyed area is helping researchers take a deeper look at life on and within the rocky slopes of these deep, ancient seamounts,” the researchers added.
Previous expeditions aboard the Nautilus research vessel have turned up plenty of unnerving marine oddities. During a 2018 excursion to the Papahānaumokuakea Marine National Monument, researchers were dumbfounded by a wriggling, googly-eyed creature that seemed to change shape while in front of the camera.
Researchers later identified the creature as a gulper eel (Eurypharynx pelecanoides), an incredibly big-mouthed fish that can unhinge its massive jaw to swallow prey even larger than itself.
The researchers controlling the ROV during that expedition also responded to the strange sight before them with a cultural reference.
This 230-Million-Year-Old African Dinosaur is the Oldest Dinosaur Species Ever
The newly discovered dinosaur Mbiresaurus raathi, is pictured here with other Triassic animals whose remains were also recovered from northern Zimbabwe.
The oldest definitive dinosaur species ever discovered in Africa — and one of the oldest dino species to walk Earth — has been unearthed in Zimbabwe, a new study finds. The finding sheds new light on dinosaur evolution, and on one of the most fundamental questions of Triassic palaeontology: Why did dinosaurs live in only some parts of the ancient supercontinent Pangaea?
Scientists began working on the Pebbly Arkose Formation in northern Zimbabwe in 2017. After five years of careful excavation and COVID delays, they’ve finally unveiled the dig’s star specimen: Mbiresaurus raathi, a nearly complete skeleton named after “Mbire,” the Shona dynasty that once ruled the region.
The species’ name honours Michael Raath, who helped discover the first fossils in the area. At roughly 230 million years old, the specimen is on par with the oldest dinosaurs ever found. Their results were published online Wednesday (Aug. 31) in the journal Nature(opens in new tab).
“The earliest dinosaurs were small — far from the giants we usually think of,” Christian Kammerer, a research curator of palaeontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences who was not involved in the research, told Live Science in an email.
The newly named dinosaur is a sauropodomorph, a relative of the towering (and iconic) long-necked sauropods like Brachiosaurus and Apatosaurus. At around 6 feet (2 meters) long, or about as long as a Shetland pony, and 1.5 feet (0.5 m) tall at the hip, M. raathi wasn’t tiny, but it would have been dwarfed by later sauropods, such as the massive 122-foot-long (37 m) Patagotitan.
M. raathi lived during the late Triassic period (252 million to 201 million years ago) along the banks of an ancient river in what would become Zimbabwe. It was a rich ecosystem, filled with more than just dinosaurs. “I think a lot of the story is about all the different animals that we found together,” study first author Christopher Griffin, a vertebrate paleontologist at Yale University, told Live Science.
The excavation unearthed numerous protomammals known as cynodonts, as well as armored crocodilians, bizarre beaked reptiles called rhynchosaurs, and even evidence of an early meat-eating dinosaur.
This assemblage almost exactly mirrors the fossils palaeontologists might expect to find an ocean away, buried in the steppes of Patagonia or tucked away in the rocky outcroppings of Brazil.
During the Triassic period, all of Earth’s continents were smooshed together into one giant landmass known as Pangaea. Because of this ancient proximity, many regions that are now separated by entire oceans — such as the coasts of South America and Africa — once shared flora and fauna. “If you draw a line across Pangaea connecting northern Argentina and southern Brazil, you cross northern Zimbabwe as well,” Griffin said.
Study first author Christopher Griffin excavates some Mbiresaurus raathi fossils, seen here wrapped in a plaster field jacket, in 2017.
Consequently, M. raathi closely resembles other late Triassic sauropodomorphs, like the deceptively named Eoraptor and the dog-size Saturnalia, both found in Brazil, as well as some found in India.
It remains a bit of a mystery as to why certain animal species were relegated to certain regions of Pangaea during this time. “You might think that it would be easy to traverse a supercontinent,” Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science, “But it seems not.”
Sites such as the Pebbly Arkose Formation, however, offer clues to this millennia-old mystery. Building on earlier research, the researchers proposed that varied climate patterns held Triassic animals in place, rather than physical boundaries like oceans.
The closely-related dinosaurs found in South America, south-central Africa and India indicate that similar animals roamed freely across this particular latitude band, but not outside of it, likely because of climatic barriers like extreme heat or drought, the researchers wrote in the study.
Paleontolgist Sterling Nesbitt (left) and Christopher Griffin (right) excavate the remains of a herrerasaurid dinosaur in 2019.
Dinosaurs probably didn’t disperse to the other parts of Pangaea until these climatic barriers relaxed. But the stomping grounds of other major animal groups with roots in the Triassic, including mammals, turtles, amphibians and reptiles, are still influenced today by how these climatic bands’ affected the groups’ ancestors, the team suggested.
Meanwhile, there is one other dinosaur fossil discovered in Africa that may be even older than M. raathi — Nyasasaurus, which was found in a roughly 245 million-year-old fossil formation in Tanzania.
However, Nyasasaurus is known only from a handful of bones. Taken together, they do not form a complete enough skeleton to determine whether it was a true dinosaur, or simply a dinosaur ancestor, known as a dinosauromorph. Either way, M. raathi represents a key piece in the mosaic of dinosaur lineage.
“As a rule, the discovery of a new species is very important to science,” said study co-author Darlington Munyikwa, a palaeontologist and deputy executive director of National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe. And, he told Live Science, the fact that this species is the oldest confirmed dinosaur in Africa makes it particularly “awesome.” The specimen now resides in the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo, where it will inspire generations of palaeontologists to come.
“We’ve known next to nothing about the earliest dinosaurs in Africa, and the discovery of Mbiresaurus changes that,” said Brusatte. “I think it is one of the most important recent dinosaur discoveries anywhere on the planet.”
