Musango joins Musankwa, another unique Zimbabwean sauropodomorph the same team described in 2024 from the same rock beds. The researchers also found lungfish and phytosaurs — crocodile-like aquatic reptiles — that are rare or entirely absent at South African sites.

How was it found?

Zimbabwe has a longer dinosaur record than many realize, with bones reported there since 1916. The first scientifically noted African dinosaur fossils came from South Africa's Eastern Cape and were described in the 1850s. Paleontologists have been excavating the continent's material for nearly two centuries, and Africa now hosts up to 25% of Earth's animal and plant species.

Early Zimbabwean finds stayed largely overlooked until the 1970s, when Zimbabwean paleontologists Geoffrey Bond and Michael Raath discovered abundant material near Bulawayo and in the lower Zambezi Valley. Most of it was assigned to known South African species at the time.

Work stalled for decades until Steve Edwards, a local safari camp manager and devoted fossil hunter, found productive new sites on the Lake Kariba shoreline inside Matusadona National Park. News of his discoveries reached Jonah Choiniere, an early-dinosaur expert at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, who assembled an international team of South African, Zimbabwean and UK-based collaborators.

The sites sit deep inside the park, so the team improvised. They used a Kariba houseboat as a mobile hotel and laboratory, mounting two expeditions in 2017 and 2018, and have been cleaning and studying the collected material ever since.

The fossils came from brick-red mudstones and sandstones laid down by ancient rivers about 210 million years ago, during the Late Triassic period, which ran from 237 to 201 million years ago. Plant fossils and geological evidence paint a picture of a dry landscape dotted with large conifer trees, with green vegetation corridors following permanent watercourses.

What explains the unique species?

The leading hypothesis is climate. In the Late Triassic, Zimbabwe sat further north than South Africa and closer to the equator. Barrett and his colleagues suspect those positional and climatic differences kept dinosaur populations separated, producing distinct regional species — a pattern seen in living animals today, where climate strongly shapes where species live.

The team is now reappraising the historical dinosaur collections in Bulawayo. Many of those fossils, it appears, can't be assigned to South African species either, contradicting earlier assumptions that persisted for decades.

What comes next?

The findings are preliminary in scope, and the researchers are careful about how much weight a handful of species can carry. Two follow-up efforts are planned:

• Further expeditions back to Kariba to search for more fossils
• More detailed dating of the dinosaur-bearing rocks and their ancient environments, allowing precise comparison with sites elsewhere

The skull of Musango remains missing, leaving its diet an open question. Still, the picture emerging from Zimbabwe is already shifting how paleontologists view early dinosaur evolution — from a single southern African story to, possibly, several regional ones.