“The end of the age of dinosaurs in Africa is one of the final frontiers for dinosaur paleontology,” Lamanna says. The new find “adds a bit of hard evidence to what African fauna was like” during this crucial time period. When dinosaurs first emerged, they populated a single land mass made up of connected continents. But as those continents began to shift and break apart, many terrestrial dinosaurs became separated by vast oceans. Some paleontologists theorized that, like modern-day Australia, Cretaceous Africa was essentially an island continent filled with unique species. Other experts suggested the African land mass still had ties to its neighbors. “Was Africa an isolated continent, or were there connections with the land masses surrounding it?” asks Field Museum paleontologist Eric Gorscak. The new find, he says, suggests the latter. So far, Mansourasaurus seems very similar to Cretaceous sauropods found in Europe and Asia, suggesting that the Egyptian dinosaur did not evolve in isolation.