Putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle can be a lot of fun! Especially when the pieces are millions of years old. Jonah Choinière of the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and his team of paleontologists put together the pieces of two giant dinosaur skeletons during the recent lockdown period in South Africa.
These skeletons were among many fossil remains of prehistoric creatures shepherd Dumangwe Thyobeka found in 2018 in Qhemegha, a village in Eastern Cape Province. Thyobeka had seen what appeared to be dinosaur bones — he reasoned that they were much too big to be cattle bones. He knew to notify the authorities, and Choinière said he could still remember how excited he was when he and his team arrived at the site.
“There were dinosaur bones and fossils sticking out everywhere, although to the untrained eye, these fossils wouldn’t be immediately obvious,” he said. “There might have been a water hole there millions of years ago, because of the richness of the find.”
Choinière said they had unearthed a lost world, which some have nicknamed “Jurassic Park.” But it’s more of a “Triassic Park,” as most of the finds date to the Triassic Period (252 million to 201 million years ago). Some of the finds are as old as 220 million years old.
https://www-washingtonpost-com.cdn....08ec26-8e34-11eb-a6bd-0eb91c03305a_story.html
These skeletons were among many fossil remains of prehistoric creatures shepherd Dumangwe Thyobeka found in 2018 in Qhemegha, a village in Eastern Cape Province. Thyobeka had seen what appeared to be dinosaur bones — he reasoned that they were much too big to be cattle bones. He knew to notify the authorities, and Choinière said he could still remember how excited he was when he and his team arrived at the site.
“There were dinosaur bones and fossils sticking out everywhere, although to the untrained eye, these fossils wouldn’t be immediately obvious,” he said. “There might have been a water hole there millions of years ago, because of the richness of the find.”
Choinière said they had unearthed a lost world, which some have nicknamed “Jurassic Park.” But it’s more of a “Triassic Park,” as most of the finds date to the Triassic Period (252 million to 201 million years ago). Some of the finds are as old as 220 million years old.
https://www-washingtonpost-com.cdn....08ec26-8e34-11eb-a6bd-0eb91c03305a_story.html