A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science.
An articulated partial hind limb collected from the Pebbly Arkose Formation (Norian, Upper Triassic) of the Upper Karoo Group of Zimbabwe is described as a new taxon of sauropodomorph dinosaur.Musankwa sanyatiensis gen.et sp.nov.was discovered on the shoreline of Lake Kariba, on Spurwing Island in the Mid-Zambezi Basin.The holotype consists of a right femur, tibia, and astragalus, and can be distinguished from all other Late Triassic massopodan sauropodomorphs on the basis of numerous features, which form a unique character combination.Phylogenetic analysis recovers the new taxon as the earliest-branching lineage within Massopoda.Musankwa is only the fourth dinosaur to be named from the Karoo-aged basins of Zimbabwe and further demonstrates the high potential of this region for discoveries of new early dinosaur material.
Southern Africa provides critical information on Late Triassic–Early Jurassic terrestrial tetrapod faunas. Most of the localities in this region are in South Africa and Lesotho, but preliminary work in Zimbabwe has revealed significant potential. Early Jurassic Zimbabwean localities have yielded the basal sauropodomorph Massospondylus , the early sauropod Vulcanodon and theropod material. Late Triassic localities are also known, but have yielded only fragmentary specimens thus far. In early 2017, a joint South African-Zimbabwean-UK team conducted fieldwork in the upper Karoo-aged deposits along the shores of Lake Kariba, northern Zimbabwe (Mid-Zambesi Basin). We relocated the Vulcanodon type locality on Island 126/127 and found that, contrary to previous reports suggesting a Toarcian age, the quarry was in a horizon pre-dating the onset of Drakensburg volcanism (= Batoka Basalts). It is situated instead within the earlier Lower Jurassic Forest Sandstone. This indicates that Vulcanodon is 10–15 million years older than thought previously, recalibrating several nodes within Sauropoda and indicating extensive overlap between true sauropods and 'prosauropods'. Other new vertebrate localities show that sauropodomorphs are present in the Forest Sandstone and upper Tashinga (Late Triassic) formations, but a grey mudstone facies within the Pebbly Arkose Member of the latter unit yields a more aquatic fauna, including lungfish and phytosaurs, but lacking sauropodomorphs. The phytosaur occurrence is the first in Africa south of the Sahara. Faunal and sedimentological evidence indicates that the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic sites in this region were deposited under more mesic environments than their lateral equivalents in South Africa.
We report the occurrence of a furcula (fused clavicles) in both species of the Early Jurassic coelophysid theropod dinosaur Syntarsus (Coelophysidae sensu Holtz, 1994; =Coelophysis and Syntarsus and all descendants of their most recent common ancestor). The furcula is a median pectoral element formed by ontogenetic fusion of the left and right clavicles. It articulates laterally with a facet on the acromion process of the scapula, and medially with the sternum. Study of the holotype of Syntarsus kayentakatae (MNA V2623) uncovered a furcula in articulation with the left scapulocoracoid. Re-examination of elements previously identified as hyoids of Syntarsus rhodesiensis (QG 193) show these bones are actually furculae, nearly identical in morphology to that of S. kayentakatae. These specimens mark the earliest confirmed record of furculae to date, both temporally and phylogenetically. This suggests that the fusion of clavicles into furculae occurred much earlier in the
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