Dinosaur bone from Lesotho suggests Africans discovered fossils first

According to researchers, "Paleontology” was not even a term when Africans found dinosaur fossils.

Most people agree that British gentlemen, who made their discoveries in England during the 17th and 19th centuries, are the ones who found the first dinosaur bones. In his 1676 book The Natural History of Oxfordshire, English natural history expert Robert Plot became the first to describe a dinosaur bone. Many British natural scientists would come to dominate the field of dinosaur palaeontology during the next two centuries.

However, a study reveals that palaeontology's history extends considerably further back in time. The first dinosaur bone may have been found in Africa 500 years before Plot's, according to the data the researchers provided.

This is not unexpected. Africa is the birthplace of humanity, and Homo sapiens have been around for at least 300,000 years. Additionally, the continent is home to a wide variety of rock outcrops, including the southern African Karoo, the east African Rift Valley, the Egyptian Fayum Depression, and Morocco's Kem Kem beds. These outcrops contain fossils that our predecessors have always been able to reach.

Thus, the likelihood that Africans were the first to uncover fossils was not remote. It was bound to happen.

An archaeologist at Bolahla found in 1990 that a fossilized phalanx, a finger bone, from a dinosaur named Massospondylus had been brought into the cave. The only explanation for how this phalanx ended up there is that it was brought to the cave by someone in the distant past, given that there are no fossil skeletons protruding from the cave's walls.