Reconstruction of Musango matusadonaensis in its natural setting
AI-generated image (ChatGPT 5.6 Sol)
Based on an illustration by Mark Witton.
Based on an illustration by Mark Witton.
When Musango matusadonaensis was alive, it would have lived alongside ancient rivers and streams.
© Mark Witton 2026
It is gap-filling time again — not because palaeontologists have discovered some predetermined evolutionary “missing link”, but because another conspicuous blank on the palaeontological map is being filled. This time, the new evidence comes from Africa and concerns a dinosaur that lived about 210 million years ago, during the Late Triassic.
The discovery sheds new light on the early diversification and geographical distribution of dinosaurs, when they were still only a relatively minor component of terrestrial ecosystems. Over the following millions of years, they diversified into an extraordinary range of forms and became the dominant large land animals of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
Gaps in the fossil record are, of course, eagerly seized upon by creationists desperate to find somewhere to insert their god. Their enthusiasm tends to diminish markedly whenever palaeontologists recover new evidence from one of those gaps. Each such discovery removes another supposed refuge for the ever-shrinking god of the gaps, so the evidence must be dismissed as misidentified, incorrectly dated or merely another example of “evolutionary storytelling”.
No matter how many gaps science fills, creationists continue to assure themselves that the next one will be different: that it will finally be the gap that science cannot investigate and into which their preferred creator can safely be inserted. Unfortunately for that strategy, palaeontologists continue to discover fossils, dating methods continue to improve, and previously neglected regions continue to be explored.
This latest discovery consists of a partial skeleton excavated from exposures of the Late Triassic Pebbly Arkose Formation on the shore of Lake Kariba in northern Zimbabwe. An international team of Zimbabwean, South African and British scientists has named the animal Musango matusadonaensis. The study was led by Professor Paul M. Barrett of the Natural History Museum, London, while the expeditions during which the fossils were collected were led by Professor Jonah Choiniere of the University of the Witwatersrand’s Evolutionary Studies Institute.
Musango was an early sauropodomorph — a member of the lineage that later produced the enormous, long-necked sauropods such as Diplodocus. Unlike those gigantic four-legged descendants, however, Musango was a relatively lightly built, predominantly bipedal animal. It measured an estimated 4.5 metres in length but weighed only about 222 kilograms. Its skull has not been recovered, so its diet cannot be established with certainty, although comparisons with related dinosaurs suggest that it was probably herbivorous or omnivorous.
The fossil record of early dinosaurs is extremely uneven. Europe, North America and parts of South America have been studied far more intensively than much of Africa, leaving large gaps caused not necessarily by the absence of dinosaurs but by the scarcity of sustained palaeontological exploration. Musango is only the fifth dinosaur formally named from Zimbabwe, following the description in 2024 of another sauropodomorph from the same formation, Musankwa sanyatiensis.
Phylogenetic analysis places Musango and Musankwa as close relatives within Unaysauridae, a group whose fossils are known from Africa, India and South America — landmasses that were then joined within Gondwana. Together, these discoveries support an emerging picture in which Late Triassic southern Africa contained several distinct ecosystems with their own dinosaur communities, rather than a single uniform fauna extending across the region. Africa was therefore not a peripheral spectator in early dinosaur evolution; its still-underexplored rocks may preserve crucial evidence about how dinosaurs diversified and spread before their later ecological dominance.
The Pebbly Arkose Formation. The Pebbly Arkose Formation is a sequence of predominantly terrestrial sedimentary rocks within the Upper Karoo Group of southern Africa. It is exposed in several sedimentary basins in Zimbabwe and neighbouring countries, including the Mid-Zambezi and Cabora Bassa basins. Around Lake Kariba, erosion along the modern shoreline has exposed fossil-bearing rocks that were previously difficult to reach.The discovery is described in a paper recently published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. It was accompanied by a news release from the Natural History Museum, London:
The formation takes its name from its characteristic pebbly arkosic sandstone. Arkose is a sandstone containing an unusually high proportion of feldspar, generally derived from the comparatively rapid erosion of nearby granitic rocks before chemical weathering could destroy much of the feldspar.
Age
The Pebbly Arkose Formation dates from the Late Triassic, but its precise age varies between locations. It is therefore described as diachronous: sediments assigned to the formation in different basins were deposited at different times.
Older exposures in Zimbabwe’s Cabora Bassa Basin contain the approximately 230-million-year-old dinosaur Mbiresaurus raathi and are assigned to the late Carnian stage. The Lake Kariba exposures that produced Musango matusadonaensis and Musankwa sanyatiensis are younger and are assigned to the Norian stage, approximately 210 million years ago. A maximum depositional-age estimate of 209.2 ± 4.5 million years has been reported for part of the Mid-Zambezi Basin succession.
What are the rocks made of?
Around Lake Kariba, the formation is approximately 79–137 metres thick and includes:
- coarse, pebbly arkosic sandstones;
- finer-grained sandstones;
- maroon, pink and grey conglomerates;
- mudstones and muddy siltstones;
- ancient soil horizons, or palaeosols;
- carbonate nodules, root traces and desiccation cracks.
The reddish colours of many of the rocks were produced by oxidised iron minerals, indicating that the sediments were repeatedly exposed to air in well-drained terrestrial environments.
The Late Triassic environment
The sediments were laid down by river systems crossing broad floodplains. Coarse sandstones and conglomerates represent river channels, while finer mudstones and siltstones accumulated on floodplains, in abandoned channels and during overbank floods.
The landscape experienced strongly seasonal conditions. At times, rivers overflowed and spread sediment across the floodplain; at others, the ground remained exposed long enough for soils to form, plants to take root, animals to burrow and pools to dry out. Desiccation cracks and carbonate-rich soils indicate dry intervals, while lungfish, large amphibians and aquatic reptiles show that rivers, pools or lakes persisted elsewhere in the landscape.
Silicified tree trunks, fossil roots and other plant remains suggest that river margins supported substantial vegetation. Musango probably inhabited these wooded river corridors, feeding on vegetation or perhaps supplementing its diet with other food.
Fossils from the formation
The Pebbly Arkose Formation preserves a mixture of terrestrial and freshwater organisms, including:
- early sauropodomorph dinosaurs, including Mbiresaurus raathi, Musankwa sanyatiensis and Musango matusadonaensis;
- phytosaurs — large, superficially crocodile-like reptiles that were not crocodiles;
- metoposaurid amphibians;
- lungfish, including Ferganoceratodus edwardsi;
- other non-dinosaurian archosauromorph reptiles;
- silicified tree trunks and plant remains;
- root traces, invertebrate burrows and other trace fossils.
These fossils show that Late Triassic Zimbabwe supported complex ecosystems containing rivers, floodplains, wooded areas and permanent or semi-permanent bodies of freshwater.
Why is the formation important?
Much of what is known about early dinosaur evolution comes from comparatively intensively studied formations in Europe, North America and South America. The Pebbly Arkose Formation provides evidence from an under-investigated part of Gondwana and is revealing that southern Africa contained several distinct dinosaur communities rather than a single uniform fauna.
Its rocks also document environmental change over an extended period. Repeated river channels, floodplain deposits, developed soils, root systems, animal burrows and desiccation cracks could not all have formed during a single catastrophic flood. They record numerous cycles of flooding, sediment accumulation, soil formation, biological colonisation and drying, played out across millions of years.
New Zimbabwean dinosaur species named by Museum scientist reveals Africa’s hidden history
- Musango matusadonaensis was discovered on the shores of Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe.
- The 4.5-metre-long dinosaur lived in the Late Triassic around 210 million years ago and weighed an estimated 222 kilogrammes.
- Musango is a sauropodomorph, an early relative of dinosaurs such as Diplodocus that walked on two legs rather than four.
A newly discovered dinosaur is shining a light on an important moment in the evolution of dinosaurs.
Discovered on the shore of Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe, Musango matusadonaensis opens a window into the Late Triassic around 210 million years ago. This was the time dinosaurs were beginning to spread around the planet as they moved towards becoming Earth’s dominant animals.
Understanding how dinosaurs moved from being a relatively small part of life in the Triassic to a major part of the Jurassic and Cretaceous ecosystems that followed is still a major area of research. Fossils from Africa may hold the answer, as they have historically been understudied compared to sites in Europe and North America.
A team of British, South African and Zimbabwean scientists have been working to change this as part of research in Zimbabwe. The team previously named Musankwa sanyatiensis as just the fourth dinosaur ever described from the country in 2024, with Musango now the fifth.
Until recently, it was assumed that the dinosaurs living across southern Africa were largely the same. However, these discoveries are showing that this part of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana was actually made of a series of smaller ecosystems – each with a different cast of characters.
It suggests that what we’ve found so far is only the tip of the iceberg. We’ve already got one other new species that we’ve yet to describe, while our team has been told about other fossils from the region that we’ve yet to look at. I think it’s likely there are even more dinosaurs still to be found there.
Professor PaulM. Barrett, lead author
Natural History Museum
London, UK.
Unlike Musankwa, Musango is fairly complete for its age and bones from the spine, ribs, arms, legs and feet have been discovered. Analysis of its fossils suggest Musango was around eight years old and almost fully grown at the time of its death, and had previously recovered from a serious infection or injury.
It’s estimated that Musango would have been around 4.5 metres long when it died, which is about the size of a car. However, it was quite lightly built at just 222 kilogrammes – similar to a fully grown pig. While the dinosaur’s skull is missing, it’s likely to have been a herbivore or omnivore.
It would have fed on plants growing alongside rivers and streams in ancient Zimbabwe, and lived with lungfish and crocodile-like phytosaurs as well as other dinosaurs such as Musankwa. Further studies of the region are likely to reveal more species previously unknown to science.
Professor Jonah Choiniere, leader of the expedition and a co-author from Johannesburg’s Evolutionary Studies Institute, adds:
New dinosaur species like Musango show the value of doing palaeontological fieldwork in remote, and often scenically beautiful, places. This study is the result of a thriving international collaboration between the UK, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and reinforces the importance of southern Africa in understanding dinosaur diversity.
Professor Jonah N. Choiniere, co-author and expedition leader
Evolutionary Studies Institute
University of the Witwatersrand
Johannesburg, South Africa.
Publication:
These discoveries reveal an increasingly complex picture of dinosaur evolution in Late Triassic Gondwana. Musango was not an isolated curiosity but one member of a diverse and geographically structured fauna. Its relationship to other sauropodomorphs in Africa, India and South America is exactly what would be expected when those regions formed connected parts of Gondwana and populations were diversifying within different environments.
For creationism, therefore, the problem is not simply that Musango lived approximately 210 million years before creationists believe the Universe existed. Its anatomy, evolutionary relationships, geological setting and geographical distribution all fit coherently into the scientific account of dinosaur evolution. None requires supernatural intervention, and none resembles the abrupt appearance of separately created “kinds”. Instead, the evidence documents branching descent, dispersal and regional diversification over immense spans of time.
Nor can the Pebbly Arkose Formation plausibly be reduced to debris deposited during a single global flood. Its succession of river channels, floodplain sediments, developed soils, plant roots, animal burrows and desiccation cracks records repeated episodes of flooding, stability, biological colonisation and drying. Soil cannot develop, vegetation become established and the ground dry and crack while supposedly remaining beneath the same planet-covering flood.
Creationists may continue pointing to whatever parts of Africa’s fossil record have yet to be investigated, but absence of evidence from an underexplored region is not evidence of supernatural creation. It is an invitation to conduct more fieldwork. As expeditions return to neglected formations, the blank spaces become smaller and the evolutionary picture becomes richer. The gap never contained a god; it contained fossils waiting to be found.
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