Did you know that some of the world’s most important dinosaur discoveries were found in Africa?
Africa plays a very important part in palaeontology as many important dinosaur fossils have been discovered here. The first dinosaur hunters headed to Africa in the Victorian era and it was in 1907 that a German, Eberhard Fraas, uncovered two partial dinosaur skeletons. He was working on an expedition in Tanzania (which was formerly a German colony known as German East Africa) and he discovered the remains in what is known as the Tendaguru Beds. This was a very fertile spot for dinosaur remains and he struck lucky with two different species Barosaurus africanus and Dicraeosaurus – both were sauropods, a species of very large herbivores.
The work involved in those days was huge with hundreds of local Tanzanians working in deep pits for almost 3 years to uncover all the remains. Thousands of bones were discovered and then carried back to the ports on the coast where they were then shipped back to Germany. Some of these bones are now in pride of place in the Berlin Natural History Museum as the largest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world – the 40ft tall Brachiosaurus brancai.
The Tendaguru Beds were an excellent source of dinosaur fossils with other skeletons including the spiny-plated dinosaur Kentrosaurus found there. Most exciting of all was the realisation that these finds in Africa resembled the dinosaurs discovered in the United States and thereby proved that the same kinds of dinosaurs lived across the world during the Late Jurassic Period. Palaeontologists have recently returned to Tendaguru to continue the work there.
Other African dinosaur discoveries have been made in Egypt where the Spinosaurus was first discovered at the Baharia Oasis by another German, Stromer. This exciting discovery turned out to be a new kind of large carnivore with a spiny sail on his back. Other new discoveries were the Aegyptosaurus, a giant herbivore; Bahariasaurus, a giant meat-eater to equal the fearsome Tyrannosaurus; and Carcharodontosaurus, a smaller carnivore. Sadly much of the information and other specimens and fossils found by Stromer and his team were destroyed during the Second World War.
Also at that time the French were involved in digs in north Africa, in Morocco and Algeria and further south in Madagascar. De Lapparent and Lavocat found several new dinosaurs from Morocco and the Sahara including the Rebbachisaurus, famous for its huge vertebrae on the ridge along its back.
Amazingly enough there have actually been more dinosaur discoveries across the world in the last 10 years than in the hundreds of years previously and our knowledge of dinosaurs has recently been completely transformed. In fact history is literally being re-written all the time as these new fossils come to light.
In 2009 in South Africa palaeontologists made a fantastic discovery of a new species of dinosaur called Aardonyx celestae, which is another species of sauropod. Unusually for a heavy sauropod it walked upright, but the shape of its foreleg bones shows that they were able to take weight, so that sometimes it would drop to all fours. It was also a very old species, a pre-cursor to the diplodocus and later sauropods.
In 2010 scientists discovered a whole new species from which dinosaurs themselves evolved, the Asilisaurus kongwe or ancient lizard ancestor. Asilisaurus lived about ten million years earlier than the oldest known dinosaurs and are part of the group are called silesaurs. Scientists say that the relationship between dinosaurs and silesaurs was similar to that between humans and chimpanzees. Nowadays palaeontologists believe that silesaurs, dinosaurs, flying pterosaurs and even our common crocodiles many have shared an ancestor dating back even further. These fascinating creatures which have captured our imagination for so long are still continuing to surprise and amaze us.
