A fossilized dinosaur from Africa is one of the earliest and most complete prehistoric remains unearthed by humans so far, said a Virginia Tech alumnus who discovered the bones during fieldwork as a paleontology student.
Christopher Griffin was rooting through the dirt of northern Zimbabwe alongside other paleontologists as part of his graduate studies five years ago, when he first uncovered the oldest known remains of a Triassic-period dinosaur, dating back more than 200 million years ago.
Its name is Mbiresaurus raathiand it was only missing a hand and some bits of skull, Griffin said.
“Up until now, the earliest dinosaur skeletons had been known almost exclusively from South America,” Griffin said. “The reason that we went to Zimbabwe in the first place is because all of the continents at this time were joined together into one massive supercontinent, called Pangea.”
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Based on where other early dinosaur fossils were found in modern-day Argentina and Brazil, retrospective maps of Pangea put northern Zimbabwe nearby, likely with similar weather patterns, he said.
“So our idea was, if it was the same climate, then we should find a lot of the same animals that were found in South America. And we did,” Griffin said. “All of the animal groups are extremely similar across the different areas, because they weren’t even that far apart back in the Triassic.”
Digging with paleontologists from Zimbabwe and Brazil, Griffin and others from Virginia Tech discovered the Mbiresaurus remains among older fossils from the Triassic’s Carnian age.
“It’s a fully collaborative project,” Griffin said. “A lot of times, I felt like I was just along for the ride.”
Two digs in 2017 and 2019 revealed the 6-foot dinosaur skeleton. It takes slow, careful work to properly clean a find once it is pulled from the earth, in a process called fossil prep.
“The whole process took about four years,” Griffin said. “It’s a very time-consuming process no matter what, but if you have almost the entire skeleton, it’s going to take even longer.”
The dinosaur belongs to the people of Zimbabwe, and its fossilized remains will ultimately rest at home in the country’s natural history museum for all to see and study, he said. The story of Mbiresaurus is likely just one piece of a larger puzzle.
“If these climate zones are influencing dinosaurs, how are they influencing the first mammals, or first lizards?” Griffin said. “These are questions for future fieldwork, and further museum work.”
Piquing public interest in paleontology, 194 citizen scientists attended a fossil unwrapping party at the Virginia Tech Museum of Geosciences on Tuesday, said Michelle Stocker, an assistant professor in vertebrate paleontology.
It was record attendance for the annual event, after a two-year pandemic hiatus.
“We always say that the event is open to kids from age 7 to 70, but we had people younger and older in attendance,” Stocker said. “It’s community science, first and foremost. It shows us that everybody can be involved in the scientific process.”
At the unwrapping party, people put their hands on prehistory and helped clean boxes full of fossils, from big bones to a stray ancient tooth. The fossils were dug up this summer by Virginia Tech paleontology students in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park, and elsewhere out in the American West, Stocker said.
“This kind of science is a very long-term process… Once things are cleaned, then those fossils are all part of research projects,” Stocker said. “It’s a big group effort to try and understand all of the animals that were living together in this one place at that time.”
By piecing together different hints from various fossil records, paleontologists work to unveil secrets of life long buried by nature. That’s part of what makes museums important places to fund and visit, Stocker said.
“Museums are like libraries of fossils,” Stocker said. “They’re meant to be saved for people to use for science, forever.”
Griffin, who is now a post-doctorate researcher at Yale University, said it was strange hopping on a plane to Brazil, visiting a museum and seeing on display a lot of the same types of fossils he dug up in Zimbabwe.
“I think there is a broader story about the Triassic, and the origin of dinosaurs is just one aspect of this time period,” Griffin said. “A lot of the animal groups that we have today on land originated at this same time period, when the world was very, very different.”
So many hundred million years ago, all the continents were merged together, there were no polar ice caps, and the climate was far harsher, with extreme shifts in seasons, he said. But early lizards, turtles, mammals, plus relatives to crocodiles and dinosaurs — today, dinosaurs are known as birds — all emerged from those conditions.
“It’s under this environment that a lot of the animal groups that we have today first appear in the fossil record,” Griffin said. “Understanding the environment that a lot of these groups first evolved in and how they first originated might go a long way to eventually understanding what made these groups ultimately successful.”
Stocker said Virginia Tech’s paleontology focus is relatively new for geosciences students who want to focus their coursework on the specialty.
“We also do paleontology around Virginia and West Virginia and Ohio, kind of in the Appalachian area as well,” she said. “Expanding our understanding of not just the Triassic and the animals in it, but the rocks that are around us that are a little bit older, and the pre-Triassic animals.”
She encouraged anyone interested, whether a student, curious community member or willing volunteer, to visit the Museum of Geosciences in Derring Hall, where the cast of a hulking T-Rex skull is currently on display, among other fascinations.
“We’re all related. All animals and people are part of one big family tree,” Stocker said. “It’s everybody’s heritage. Getting to see the shared history of life on Earth is something that’s very important for everybody to get to be a part of.”
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