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Murphy Allen

The rocks of Zimbabwe host many different fossils from the Triassic period, including these leaves found in a fossilized peat deposit more than 227 million years old.

To protect blocks of fossil-rich rock, paleontologists coat them in protective plaster jackets before taking them out of the field.

Mbiresaurus wasn't the only type of dinosaur found at the field site: Here, Griffin is excavating some tail vertebrae from a type of predatory dinosaur called a herrerasaurid.

To see how mature Mbiresaurus was when it died, researchers cut a thin section out of the tibia and polished it down until it was translucent. Based on the bone's growth patterns and other skeletal features, the dinosaur was mostly mature when it died.

Christopher Griffin carefully cleans excess rock off a tibia of Mbiresaurus in Virginia Tech's paleontology lab.

In a paleontology lab at Virginia Tech, Christopher Griffin holds one of Mbiresaurus's small yet robust hip bones over trays containing the dinosaur's skeleton.

The field site that yielded Mbiresaurus, seen here in 2019 as paleontologists Sterling Nesbitt and Kudzie Madzana carefully excavated it, falls within the Dande lands of northern Zimbabwe.