New dinosaur unearthed on SA farm

Published Aug 28, 2015

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Johannesburg - Studies being done by Wits University have not only unearthed the earliest baboon fossil, but also a new dinosaur species.

When Dr Adam Yates, a scientist from the Museum of Central Australia, excavated fossils on Heelbo farm in the eastern Free State in 2004, he knew they were special.

Wits PhD student Blair McPhee has now confirmed that some of those bones belonged to a new species of dinosaur, which has been named Pulanesaura eocollum, meaning “rain lizard”.

“This dinosaur showcases the unexpected diversity of locomotion and feeding strategies present in South Africa 200 million years ago. This has serious implications for how dinosaurs were carving up their ecosystems,” said McPhee.

The Pulanesaura would have lived in the Early Jurassic period between 200 and 180 million years ago.

McPhee and Yates, along with Dr Matthew Bonnan from Stockton University in the US, Dr Jonah Choiniere from Wits and Dr Johann Neveling, a geologist from the Council of Geoscience, published a paper in the Scientific Reports publication last week describing the dinosaur.

The Pulanesaura was about 8m long and weighed 5 tons.

The researchers say that the specialised teeth, vertebrae and forelimb of Pulanesaura meant it would have spent all its time on all fours, browsing lower vegetation.

The dinosaur was named after Panie Bremer, the daughter of the former owner of Heelbo.

Her Sesotho nickname was Pulane, roughly translated to mean “comes with rain”.

This was also appropriate as the fossils were excavated during a particularly rainy period on the property.

Meanwhile, a team from Wits University’s Evolutionary Studies Institute have discovered a fossil specimen of the earliest baboon ever found.

The partial skull is more than 2 million years old and was found during excavation which took place between 2009 and 2010 at Malapa at the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site.

This is the same site where the partial skeletons of a new early hominin species were discovered in 2010.

The species to which these fossils belong, Papio angusticeps, is closely related to modern baboons.

“According to molecular clock studies, baboons are estimated to have diverged from their closest relatives 1.8 to 2.2 million years ago; however, until now, most fossil specimens known within this time range have been either too fragmentary to be definitive or too primitive to be confirmed as members of the living,” said Dr Christopher Gilbert, the lead author of the study.

Because monkeys are key time-sensitive elements in the fossil record, this specimen will allow for future studies to better estimate the age of fossil sites where the species is found.

“South African early hominin sites, in particular, may be able to achieve more accurate age estimates on the basis of these new findings,” according to Wits.

The Star

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