On the shores of Lake Kariba, in Zimbabwe, a dinosaur leg has been found! This leg belongs to a new dinosaur species called Musankwa sanyatiensis.
Sauropodomorphs, like Musankwa, were dinosaurs with long necks and small heads that ate plants. They evolved to become the largest animals ever to live on Earth.
Scientists found this leg on Spurwing Island. They discovered a femur, a tibia, and an astragalus, all from the right leg. Musankwa weighed about 390 kg, measured 5 meters long, and was 1.5 meters tall at the hips. It lived 210 million years ago, before a great extinction that wiped out 70% of the planet’s species.
The discovery shows that sauropodomorph dinosaurs, like Musankwa, were not affected by this extinction. This new species is only the fourth found in the Karoo basins of Zimbabwe, showing that there is still much to discover.
