Tag Archives: dinosaur

New dinosaur Mbiresaurus, a boon for Zimbabwe and Virginia Tech paleontology

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The unearthing of one of the earliest dinosaurs ever found is a major win for the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe.

The Mbiresaurus skeleton is almost complete, making it a perfect reference material for further finds. It is also the first sauropodomorph find of its size from Zimbabwe, where most of the earlier sauropodomorph finds are usually of medium- to large-sized animals.

“The discovery of the Mbiresaurus is an exciting and special find for Zimbabwe and the entire paleontological field,” said Michel Zondo, a curator and fossil preparer at the museum.

Darlington Munyikwa, deputy executive director of the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe, said: “The unfolding fossil assemblage from the Pebbly Arkose Formation in the Cabora Bassa Basin, which was hitherto known for paucity of animal fossils, is exciting. A number of fossil sites [are] waiting for future exploration were recorded, highlighting the potential of the area to add more valuable scientific material.”

Much of the Mbiresaurus specimen is being kept in Virginia Tech’s Derring Hall as the skeleton is cleaned and studied. All of the Mbiresaurus skeleton and the additional found fossils will be permanently kept at Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

“This is such an exciting and important dinosaur find for Zimbabwe, and we have been watching the scientific process unfold with great pride,” said Moira Fitzpatrick, the museum’s director. She was not involved in the study. “It has been a pleasure to work with Dr. Griffin,and we hope the relationship will continue well into the future.”

The discovery of Mbiresaurus also marks another highpoint for the Paleobiology and Geobiology Research Group. In 2019, Nesbitt authored a paper detailing the newly named tyrannosauroid dinosaur Suskityrannus hazelae. Incredibly, Nesbitt discovered the fossil at age 16 as a high school student participating in a dig expedition in New Mexico in 1998.

“Our group seeks out equal partnerships and collaborations all over the world and this project demonstrates a highly successful and valued collaboration,” Nesbitt said. “We will continue studying the many fossils from the same areas as where the new dinosaur came from and explore the fossil beds further.”

 

Africa’s oldest known dinosaur skeleton to bridge the ‘Missing Middle’

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An international team of paleontologists led by Virginia Tech has discovered a skeleton of new long-necked dinosaur Mbiresaurus raathi, that fills a critical geographic gap in the fossil record of the oldest dinosaurs.

The skeleton, mostly intact, was first found by a graduate student in the Virginia Tech Department of Geosciences and other paleontologists during two excavations over the course of period in 2017 and 2019.

Published on Thursday in the journal Nature, the findings show that the skeleton is the oldest dinosaur skeleton ever found in Africa. The animal is estimated to have been 6 feet long with a long tail. It weighed anywhere from 20 to 65 pounds. The skeleton, missing only some of the hand and portions of the skull, was found in northern Zimbabwe.

Dinosaur

“The discovery of Mbiresaurus raathi fills in a critical geographic gap in the fossil record of the oldest dinosaurs and shows the power of hypothesis-driven fieldwork for testing predictions about the ancient past,” said Christopher Griffin, who graduated in 2020 with a Ph.D. in geosciences from the Virginia Tech College of Science.

Africa’s oldest-known definitive dinosaurs, it was roughly equivalent in age to the oldest dinosaurs found anywhere in the world. The oldest known dinosaurs — from roughly 230 million years ago, the Carnian Stage of the Late Triassic period — are extremely rare and have been recovered from northern Argentina, southern Brazil, and India.

Sterling Nesbitt, co-author of the study, said, “Early dinosaurs like Mbiresaurus raathi show that the early evolution of dinosaurs is still being written with each new find and the rise of dinosaurs was far more complicated than previously predicted.”

 

Fatal Cancer found in dinosaur that lived in present Canada 76 million years ago

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Roughly 76 million years ago, a Centrosaurus that lived in what is now Canada was walking around with a malignant tumour in its lower leg, found scientists based on its deformed fossil bone.

The cancer was diagnosed osteosarcoma and this is the first time that cancer has been confirmed in a dinosaur, although scientists have identified benign tumours in Tyrannosaurus rex fossils in the past.
Researchers say that the tumour could have eventually been fatal, but the Centrosaurus probably died in a flood with the rest of its herd.

dinosaur bone cancer / © ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM/MCMASTER UNIVERSITY

This deformed bone had a malignant tumor in the dinosaur fossil of partial fibula—a bone from the lower leg—belonged to a horned, plant-eating Centrosaurus that lived about 76 million years ago in what is now Dinosaur Park in southern Alberta in Canada.

Paleontologists initially thought the bone was deforemd due to a fracture but a new study, published in The Lancet Oncology, found it after comparing it with a bone tumor from a human patient. The osteosarcoma cancer primarily attacks teens and young adults and causes tumors of immature bone tissue, frequently in the long bones of the leg.

Similar cancer diagnosis in dinosaurs

In the past such a tumor was found in Tyrannosaurus rex fossils and arthritis in duck-billed hadrosaurs, as well as an osteosarcoma in a 240-million-year-old turtle but they were benign. The present study is the first to confirm a dinosaur cancer diagnosis at the cellular level.

Scientists examined the full fossil with high-resolution computerized tomography scans and examined thin sections under the microscope to find the tumor advanced enough that it had probably plagued the animal for some time.

A similar case in a human, left untreated, would be fatal, they wrote. However, because the fossil was found in a bone bed with lots of other Centrosaurus specimens, the dinosaur likely died in a flood with the rest of its herd and not from the cancer, they said.