The earliest known dinosaur discovered

LONDON - Reuters

This artist rendering shows Nyasasaurus parringtoni, the earliest dinosaur or the closest dinosaur relative yet discovered, according to researchers. REUTERS Photo

Researchers have found what could be the earliest known dinosaur to walk the Earth lurking in the corridors of London’s Natural History Museum.

A mysterious fossil specimen that has been in the museum’s collection for decades has now been identified as most likely coming from a dinosaur that lived about 245 million years ago - 10 to 15 million years earlier than any previously discovered examples.

The creature was about the size of a Labrador dog and has been named Nyasasaurus parringtoni after southern Africa’s Lake Nyasa, today called Lake Malawi, and Cambridge University’s Rex Parrington, who collected the specimen at a site near the lake in the 1930s.

“It was a case of looking at the material with a fresh pair of eyes,” Paul Barrett from the Natural History Museum, who worked on the study, said. “This closes a gap in the fossil record and pushes back the existence of dinosaurs.”

The London fossil was studied by researchers in the 1950s but no conclusion was reached and nothing was published, said Barrett. “It was a mystery what it was ... It just became this mythical animal.”

Two features of the London fossil, together with a similar sample subsequently spotted at the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town, are strong evidence that the animal belongs with the dinosaurs, the researchers said.

Unique feature

The bone tissues in the upper arm show marks of rapid growth, common in dinosaurs, and they also have a feature known as an elongated deltopectoral crest that anchored the upper arm muscles, a feature unique to dinosaurs.

“Although we only know Nyasasaurus from fossil fragments, the anatomy of its upper arm bone and hips have features that are unique to dinosaurs, making us confident that we’re dealing with an animal very close to dinosaur origin,” said Barrett.

The researchers believe Nyasasaurus probably stood upright, was a meter tall at the hip, 2-3 meters long from head to tail, and weighed 20-60 kg.