A New Dinosaur Discovered on a Hippo-Filled Lake in Zimbabwe

The sun was orange and low over Lake Kariba. Professor Pip crouched on a rocky shore, humming to himself, tail twitching. From one pocket he pulled a small, soft brush. From another, a magnifying glass. From a THIRD pocket he pulled — a sandwich. "Oh! Not that one." He tucked it back.

"Whoa!" Mia whispered, pointing. "Is that…?"

Peeking out of the dirt was a long, curved bone the size of Leo's whole leg. Old. Very, very old.

"Precisely!" murmured Pip. "That, my fellow scientists, is a piece of a dinosaur nobody had ever met until this year. Its name is Musango matusadonaensis."

"That's a big name for a bone," Leo giggled.

"It's a lovely name," Pip said. "'Musango' means 'living in the bush' in ChiShona, and 'matusadonaensis' means 'from Matusadona' — the park just over there. Two hundred and ten million years ago, this fellow walked on two legs like a very tall, very hungry chicken, ate leafy plants by the riverside, and weighed about as much as a small pony."

Mia peered at the bone. "How do you find something SO old?"

"Ah! Watch." Pip took his brush and — swish, swish, plip — brushed away the loose sand around the bone. He was gentle as a whisper. "Bones this old are not really bones anymore. Bit by bit, over millions of years, water carried tiny bits of rock into the bone and turned it INTO stone. This is called a fossil. If I dig too hard, I'll break the story. If I brush too soft, I'll never find it. Just right, and — plop! — history comes out."

Behind them, a hippo yawned in the shallows. Leo froze.

"Don't worry," Pip whispered. "The scientists who found Musango did their work from a little floating boat, RIGHT past hippos and crocodiles. They said the bones were more precious than the danger. Curiouser and curiouser, isn't it? A whole new dinosaur, hidden right where the water rises and falls."

"Oh!" said Mia. "So the dinosaurs are like buried treasure — but treasure that tells us stories!"

"Exactly right, my dear scientist. Every fossil is a letter written 210 million years ago… waiting for someone kind enough to open it." He handed each child a soft brush. "Now. Very, very gently — YOU try."