In Zimbabwe, researchers found Mbiresaurus raathi, Africa’s oldest dinosaur.

Scientists in Zimbabwe have discovered the remnants of Africa’s first dinosaur, which roamed the planet some 230 million years ago.

A group of palaeontologists from different countries unearthed the dinosaur, which is known as Mbiresaurus raathi. It could weigh up to 30 kilogrammes, was only one metre (3.2 feet) tall, and had a lengthy tail (66 pounds).

The first bone’s discoverer, Christopher Griffin, told AFP on Thursday that the animal ‘ran around on two legs and had a fairly small head.’

Griffin, a 31-year-old Yale University researcher, asserts that the dinosaur belonged to the sauropodomorph species, the same linage as later enormous long-necked dinosaurs. Most likely an omnivore, it ate plants, insects, and small animals.

A team of researchers from Zimbabwe, Zambia, and the United States found the skeleton during two missions in 2017 and 2019.

‘I scooped out the complete femur and I knew at that point, that it was a dinosaur and I was holding Africa’s earliest known dinosaur fossil,’ recalled Griffin, a PhD candidate at Virginia Tech University at the time.

His group’s initial findings were published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.