Cape Town – A 200-million-year dinosaur previously unknown to the scientific world due to flawed categorisation has been named “Sefapanosaurus” with a Sesotho prefix, announced the University of Cape Town (UCT) on Thursday.
“As soon as I looked at the material I realised it was different to Aardonyx,” said UCT Department of Biological Sciences PhD student Emil Krupandan.
Krupandan and Dr Alejandro Otero, an Argentinian palaeontologist, were visiting the Evolutionary Science Institute (ESI) in Johannesburg when they noticed the Sefapanosaurus’ bones were distinctive from other dinosaurs they had studied.
“This find indicates the importance of re-looking at old material,” said Krupandan.
The Sefapanosaurus, named for the distinctive cross shape of one of its foot bones, was found in the late 1980s in South Africa near the Lesotho border and was initially thought to be the remains of another South African dinosaur, the Aardonyx.
However, with the work of a team which included Krupandan, Otero, and UCT palaeobiologist Professor Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan, it was later found that the Sefapanosaurus was a completely new dinosaur.
Due to its place of discovery, it was decided the dinosaur would have a Sesotho name.
The Sefapanosaurus, considered to be of medium size, is labelled a sauropodomorph dinosaur. This means, the South African dinosaur was of the earliest members of the group which later evolved to the “long-necked giants of the Mesozoic”, an era of between more than 200 and 66 million years ago.
“The discovery of Sefapanosaurus shows that there were several of these transitional early sauropodomorph dinosaurs roaming around Southern Africa about 200 million years ago,” said Chinsamy-Turan.
Otero added that the Sefapanosaurus would help close the gap between the earliest sauropodomorphs and the “gigantic sauropods,” dinosaurs with long necks and tails, small heads, and thick legs.
“Sefapanosaurus constitutes a member of the growing list of transitional sauropodomorph dinosaurs from Argentina and South Africa that are increasingly telling us about how they diversified,” he said.
ANA