Named Mbiresaurus raathi, the dinosaur was only about a meter tall, with a long tail and weighed up to 30 kg, according to the international team of paleontologists who made the discovery.

"It was running on two legs and had a fairly small head," Christopher Griffin, the scientist who unearthed the first bone, told AFP on Thursday.

It is probably an omnivore that fed on plants, small animals and insects.

The dinosaur belongs to the sauropodomorph species, the same lineage that would later include giant long-necked dinosaurs, said Griffin, a 31-year-old researcher at Yale University.

The skeleton was found during two expeditions in 2017 and 2019 by a team of researchers from Zimbabwe, Zambia and the United States.

"I dug out the whole femur and knew then that it was a dinosaur and I had the oldest known dinosaur fossil from Africa," said Griffin, who was then a PhD student at Virginia Tech University.

His team's findings were first published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

Dinosaur remains from the same era had previously only been found in South America and India.

Paleontologists chose Zimbabwe to dig after calculating that when all the continents were connected into a single landmass known as Pangea, it was at about the same latitude as earlier discoveries made in North America. Modern South.

"Mbiresaurus raathi is remarkably similar to some dinosaurs of the same age found in Brazil and Argentina, which reinforces the fact that South America and Africa were part of a continuous landmass," said Max Langer of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil.

The dinosaur is named after the Mbire district in northeastern Zimbabwe, where the skeleton was found, and paleontologist Michael Raath, who first reported fossils from this area.

Other specimens have been found in this area, all of which have been deposited in the Zimbabwe Museum of Natural History in the country's second largest city, Bulawayo.

“The discovery of Mbiresaurus is exciting and special for Zimbabwe and the entire paleontological field,” said museum curator Michel Zondo.

"The fact that the skeleton of Mbiresaurus is nearly complete makes it perfect reference material for further discoveries," he added.

© 2022 AFP