A fossilized dinosaur from Africa is one of the earliest and most complete prehistoric remains found by humans, said the Virginia Tech graduate student in paleontology who found the bones during fieldwork.
Christopher Griffin was rooting in the soil of northern Zimbabwe with other paleontologists five years ago as part of his graduate research when he first discovered the oldest remains of a Triassic-period dinosaur dating back 200 million years.
It’s his name. Mbiresaurus rathiAnd only a hand and some skull was missing, Griffin said.
“Until now, the earliest dinosaur skeletons were known only from South America,” Griffin said. “The reason we went to Zimbabwe in the first place is because at this time all the continents were joined into one giant supercontinent called Pangea.
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Based on where other early dinosaur fossils have been found in modern-day Argentina and Brazil, maps of Pangea place northern Zimbabwe nearby, possibly with similar climate conditions, he said.
“So our idea is that if it’s a similar climate, we should find a lot of similar animals found in South America. And we did,” Griffin said. “All animal groups are very similar in different areas, because they weren’t that far apart in the Triassic.”
Excavating with paleontologists from Zimbabwe and Brazil, Griffin and others from Virginia Tech Mbiresaurus It is found among fossils from the Triassic Carnian period.
“It’s a completely collaborative project,” Griffin said. “Most of the time, I felt like I went along for the ride.”
Two excavations in 2017 and 2019 revealed a 6-foot dinosaur skeleton. It takes slow and careful work to properly clean the find after it is pulled from the earth.
“The whole process took four years,” Griffin said. “It’s a very time-consuming process anyway, but if you have almost the entire skeleton, it takes even longer.”
Dinosaurs belong to the people of Zimbabwe and the buried skeletons will eventually rest at home at the country’s Natural History Museum for all to see and study, he said. History Mbiresaurus Maybe it’s just one piece of a bigger puzzle.
“If these climate zones affected the dinosaurs, how did they affect the first mammals or the first lizards?” Griffin said. “These questions are for future fieldwork and more museum work.”
At the Virginia Tech Museum of Geosciences, 194 citizen scientists attended the fossil record, said Michelle Stocker, assistant professor of vertebrate paleontology.
It was a record attendance for the annual event after two years of pandemic.
“We always say the event is open to kids ages 7 to 70, but we’ve had people younger and older,” Stoker said. “It is above all a social science. It shows us that everyone can participate in the scientific process.
At the opening party, people got their hands on prehistory and cleaned out boxes full of fossils, from large bones to crooked ancient teeth. The fossils were excavated this summer by Virginia Tech paleontology students in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park and other locations in the American West, Stocker said.
“This kind of science is a very time-consuming process … once things are cleaned up, those fossils are part of all the research projects,” Stoker said. “It’s a huge team effort to try and understand all the animals that lived together in one place at that time.”
Paleontologists work to piece together clues from different fossils to uncover the long-buried secrets of life. That’s part of what makes museums important places to fund and visit, Stoker said.
“Museums are like fossil libraries,” Stoker said. “They are meant for mankind to save forever for science.”
Griffin, now a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University, said it was strange to hop on a plane to Brazil, visit a museum and see the wide variety of fossils he excavated in Zimbabwe.
“I think there’s a broader story about the Triassic, and the origin of the dinosaurs is only one aspect of this period,” Griffin said. Most of the animal groups we have on Earth today evolved at the same time when the world was very, very different.
Several hundred million years ago, all the continents were joined together, there were no polar ices, and the climate was much worse, there was a big change in the seasons, he says. But early lizards, turtles, mammals, and their relatives, crocodiles and dinosaurs — today, dinosaurs are known as birds — all emerged from those conditions.
“Many of the animal groups we have today appear in the fossil record in this area,” Griffin said. “Understanding where many of these groups first formed and how they originated can go a long way toward understanding what ultimately made these groups successful.”
Stoker said Virginia Tech’s paleontology focus is relatively new for geoscience students who want to focus their coursework on a specialty.
“We also do paleontology around Virginia and West Virginia and Ohio, kind of in the Appalachian area,” she said. “Expanding our understanding of the Triassic and the animals in it, but also the rocks around us and the animals that predated the Triassic.”
She encouraged anyone interested, whether a student, curious community member or volunteer, to visit the Geoscience Museum in Deering Hall, where the T-Rex skull cast is currently on display.
“We are all related. All animals and people are part of one big family tree,” Stoker said. “It’s everyone’s heritage. Seeing the shared history of life on Earth is something very important for everyone to be a part of.
