Long Island professor discovers new dinosaur in Zimbabwe: ‘Big career moment’

Human interest

By means of Alex Mitchell

Call it one dinomicite discovery.

A Long Island professor is among researchers who have discovered a new dinosaur species in Zimbabwe – the fourth ever discovered in the African country.

Professor Kimi Chapelle of Stony Brook University played a crucial role in finding fossils of this long-necked herbivore, called a sauropodomorph dinosaur, which inhabited the area 210 million years ago in the Late Triassic.

The prehistoric creature was named the Musankwa sanyatiensis in honor of the houseboat explorers who lived and worked while traveling through the Mid-Zambezi Basin of islets. It’s the first dinosaur to be named in the region in more than 50 years, Stony Brook noted.

The findings were published this week in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. The expedition took place in 2017 and 2018, but follow-up laboratory research was only recently completed on the single hindlimb, including the dinosaur’s femur, tibia and ankle bones.

“We could only work during the day because when you walk around at dusk and early morning, the crocodiles and hippos come out of the water,” Chapelle, a fieldwork enthusiast, told The Post.

“Even during the day you weren’t allowed to walk along the water because crocodiles tend to grab people from the shore,” she added, calling it “a bit weird.”

Chapelle, 33, said it was common for hippos to also turn up while examining fossils. And while they seem cute, Chapelle said they are quite “extremely aggressive.”

Nevertheless, Chapelle helped unravel key details of the beast for the research led by Professor Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum of London. Weighing about 850 pounds as one of the larger dinosaurs of its time, they lived in swampy areas and most closely resemble sauropodomorphs found in South Africa, Chapelle’s home state, and Argentina.

The excited expert also noted that Zimbabwe has been underexposed in the search for dinosaur fossils, which began exactly 200 years ago.

She is hopeful that this will change things.

“We have more fossils from the area that we are still working on. I think this has given us extra impetus to try to get that done quickly.”

But right now, she’s enjoying the moment millions of years in the making.

“Naming a new dinosaur species is always a major career moment, and it’s something that will remain in the literature forever, no matter what happens.”