200-million-year-old dinosaur footprints found in Africa

Representational image

New Delhi: A team of scientists has discovered footprints of a huge carnivorous dinosaur that was present in southern Africa almost 200 million years ago.

Researchers spotted several three-toed footprints measuring 57cm long and 50cm wide.

The newly discovered dinosaur, named Kayentapus ambrokholohali, would have had an estimated body length of around 30 feet and would have been nearly three metres tall at the hip.

As per the estimation of scientists, it would have been four times the size of a lion.

"The latest discovery is very exciting and sheds new light on the kind of carnivore that roamed what is now southern Africa," said Fabien Knoll, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester in Britain.

"That's because it is the first evidence of an extremely large meat-eating animal roaming a landscape otherwise dominated by a variety of herbivorous, omnivorous and much smaller carnivorous dinosaurs. It really would have been top of the food chain," Knoll added.

Kayentapus ambrokholohali belongs to a group of dinosaurs called "megatheropod", according to the study published in the journal PLOS ONE.

The term "Megatheropods" describes the giant two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs, such as the iconic Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) which fossil evidence shows was around 12 metres long.

This study also revealed that these footprints make up the largest theropod tracks in Africa.

The tracks were found on an ancient land surface, known as a palaeosurface, in the Maseru District of Lesotho, a small country in southern Africa.