Did you know that a fossil of the Nqwebasaurus was discovered near Kirkwood?

Nqwebasaurus thwazi is the first Xhosa-named dinosaur. It was a turkey-sized coelursaurian theropod from the Early Cretaceous period (159 – 132 million years ago). A lightly built fast-running predator with hollow bones and a large brain, it swallowed small stones to help grind food in its stomach, much like the gizzards of modern birds. Its name means “fast running messenger lizard from Nqweba”.

Currently it is the oldest coelurosaur in Africa and shows that basal coelurosaurian dinosaurs inhabited Gondwana 50 million years earlier than previously thought. This is the oldest known dinosaur from the family that includes T.Rex to be found on one of the continents that once made up Gondwana. This little hunter, who probably ate bugs and lizards, was the great grandfather of many larger predators.

Nqwebasaurus is considered to have been a small to medium-sized coelurosaur. The type specimen is approximately 30 cm high and is estimated to have been 90 cm long.

Nqwebasaurus was first discovered by William J. de Klerk and Callum Ross in July 1996 during a joint expedition led by the Albany Museum in Grahamstown and Stony Brook in New York, United States, where Callum Ross was affiliated at the time. The fossil is remarkably complete and is considered an extremely rare find as no coelurosaur fossils had previously been found in Africa at this time. No new Nqwebasaurus fossils have been discovered since. It means Kirky, as it is known, is the only fossil representing its species and it is currently not possible to compare the fossil with another member of its species.