An international team of researchers has announced that a new prehistoric animal species dating back around 240 million years, during the Triassic period, used to live in Tanzania, a new study revealed.
The study, published on Wednesday in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology, stated that the new species, named Dinodontosaurus isiyavamanda, could help scientists refine the age of one of the world’s most significant fossil sites, and reshape the timeline of early dinosaur evolution.
More than 60 years ago, an extensive collection of synapsid fossils mammal-lineage vertebrates that flourished before the rise of dinosaurs – was discovered during a British expedition in 1963 to what is now Tanzania.
These fossils were housed at the Natural History Museum, London, but were only partly studied, leaving uncertainty over the identity of some of the fossils and what they could reveal about ecosystems approximately 240 million years ago.
By examining one of the associated skeletons belonging to a herbivorous group of synapsids called dicynodonts, together with a more recently discovered fragmentary skull, the research team found that the fossils belong to the genus Dinodontosaurus.
The discovery was unexpected, as Dinodontosaurus had previously been known only from South America.
Further anatomical study confirmed that the Tanzanian material represents a previously unknown species, which the researchers have named Dinodontosaurus isiyavamanda.
The name is a reference to the land of the Wamanda people, who inhabit the region of Tanzania where the fossils were found. The discovery has important implications beyond the identification of a new species.
The Tanzanian rocks that yielded Dinodontosaurus isiyavamanda are the same geological deposits that have produced fossils thought to represent the oldest possible dinosaurs.
These rocks were previously thought to share some fossil genera with rocks in South Africa, which were thought to be Middle Triassic, according to the study.
As Dinodontosaurus is now known to exist in both Tanzania and South America, it provides a new link between rock sequences in both countries and indicates that they are of equivalent age.
New radiometric dates from South America suggest that these early dinosaur-bearing rock sequences are up to 10 million years younger than that of South Africa.
This adds further evidence that the Triassic rocks of Tanzania can no longer be regarded as preserving the oldest potential dinosaur fossils, prompting a reassessment of when and where dinosaurs first evolved.
MG/as/APA