Musango Safari Camp, located on the shores of Lake Kariba close to the Matusadona National Park, is extremely proud to have assisted international palaeontologists in the discovery of a brand new dinosaur species previously unknown to science, and to have had it named after them!
The fossils of Musango matusadonaensis were first discovered in 2018 jutting out from rocks just a few metres above the waters of the Lake, within the camp's private concession area.
Steve Edwards, the camp owner (pictured above) and one of Zimbabwe's veteran professional safari guides, has collected and studied Lake Kariba's fossils for years. He returned later with a team of international scientists headed by Professor Paul Barrett from the UK's Natural History Museum to excavate the surrounding area.
The researchers uncovered a partial skeleton containing vertebrae, ribs, shoulder and hip bones, and parts of the arms, legs and feet. The skull was missing, so they weren't able to determine whether Musango was a plant-eater or an omnivore.
The dinosaur is described to have been a sub-adult or adult, about 4.5m (15 ft) long - roughly the length of an average car - with a surprisingly light body mass of only 220kg (490 lbs) - similar to a fully grown pig. It likely walked on two legs and belonged to the sauropodomorphs, the dinosaur group that includes long-necked species such as Diplodocus.
Thought to be some 210 million years old, this species would have lived during the Late Triassic, in a highly seasonal landscape crossed by rivers and streams, alongside lungfish, crocodile-like phytosaurs and other early dinosaurs. This was an important time in the evolution of life, as dinosaurs were beginning to diversify and spread around the planet, moving towards becoming Earth’s dominant animals during the Jurassic.
Africa’s dinosaur fossil record remains understudied compared with Europe and western North America. Musango matusadonaensis is the fifth dinosaur ever named from Zimbabwe, and it’s likely there are even more waiting to be discovered and likely to transform our understanding of this crucial time.
The full findings of this study, authored by Professor Paul Barratt with Steve Edwards and others, were published online in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology on 28 July 2026.
The study was very touchingly dedicated to the memory of Steve's late wife Wendy Edwards, who spent much of her life living, working and raising a family at Musango Island Safari Camp, and who is described in the study as having been ''an exemplary host and enthusiastic supporter of this work.”
You can read the full scientific article here:-
A new sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Pebbly Arkose Formation (Upper Triassic: Norian) of Kariba, Zimbabwe