Dinosaur Roots Traced to Tanzania, Zambia

Southeastern Africa was then part of a global supercontinent

Researchers have now found that dinosaur-like creatures were living in Tanzania and Zambia before they were found anywhere else on the Earth. These ancestors of dinosaurs lived in the mid-Triassic period.

Previous studies, mostly on fossils obtained from South Africa and southwest Russia, had led researchers to believe that the predecessors of dinosaurs failed to repopulate Earth after a mass extinction some 252 million years ago.