Africa’s dinosaur discoveries: five essential readings

Few prehistoric creatures inspire as much excitement and awe as dinosaurs. Whether it’s the “tyrant” T-Rex or a slender-necked Brachiosaurus, people are fascinated by these creatures that dominated landscapes around the world—including the African continent—hundreds of millions of years ago.

Dinosaurs are long gone (although we are still surrounded by their direct descendants, the birds). But researchers are still working hard to piece together the fossil record to create a more complete picture of how dinosaurs lived, walked, fed and raised their young. Their discoveries offer a glimpse into ancient landscapes and help modern scientists better understand today’s climate and ecosystems.

The Conversation Africa has featured a number of dinosaur finds on the continent. Here are five essential readings:

A rich record

Africa is widely regarded as the birthplace of mankind. However, less attention is paid to the incredibly diverse fossil record. Many of the planet’s most important life forms originated on the continent: bacteria-like organisms; many species of dinosaurs and of course primates – including humans. The rocks on the continent are also among the oldest in the world. Some of them are more than three billion years old.

That’s what prompted Julien Benoit to create a curriculum for his paleontology students that focuses on African fossil finds, rather than on finds from other parts of the world.

Read more: Africa’s rich fossil record should get the airtime it deserves

Hidden in plain sight

Many museums and universities maintain extensive fossil collections. Their content has been researched, tagged and cataloged. Sometimes, however, they hold secrets that can only be uncovered through a combination of scientific flair and cutting-edge technology. Here is how Kimberley EJ Chapelle discovered and described an entirely new species: Ngwevu intloko (“grey skull” in isiXhosa).

READ ALSO: A Fossil Hidden In Plain Sight In South Africa Turns Out To Be A New Dinosaur

A giant African dinosaur

Researchers are constantly rewriting the fossil record thanks to new discoveries. The fossilized footprints of dinosaurs are a useful tool for this work, as evidenced by a – literally – gigantic find in Lesotho.

It was once believed that the landscapes of ancient southern Africa were dominated by small and agile two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs called theropods. But the study by Lara Sciscio and her colleagues in Lesotho unexpectedly revealed that very large carnivorous dinosaurs with an estimated body length of between 8 and 9 meters (or 26 feet) — that’s a two-story building or two adult rhinos nose-to-tail — lived inside also the region.

Read more: Meet the giant dinosaur that roamed southern Africa 200 million years ago

trace finds

Still on the subject of footprints, it turns out that fossilized dinosaur footprints contain incredible detail about more than just the size and shape of the creature that made them. As Miengah Abrahams explains, they can reveal which organism left the tracks – different animals have different footprint shapes. They provide clues about the creature’s behavior and may even contain clues as to what environment dinosaurs roamed in – did they sink in wet sand or were they standing firmly on dry gravel?

Read more: Footprints Bring Science One Step Closer to Understanding Dinosaurs in Southern Africa

A toothy bite

From feet to teeth, dinosaur biters contain important clues about their life, diet, and how they moved through landscapes. So Femke Holwerda ventured into the Kem Kem strata, a geological formation in North Africa, to look for fossil dinosaur teeth. Her discoveries allowed her to paint a more complete picture of the long-necked, herbivorous (plant-eating) dinosaurs called sauropods of the early Cretaceous of North Africa.

Read more: What we learned from dinosaur teeth in North Africa