Major Bells Tower And Dinosaur Footprints Tour

Major Bells Tower in Leribe, the fortifications that were built by the British at the end of the 1870s and were besieged but not captured during the Gun War of 1880. The Tower is still largely intact. Visitors can see an interesting primitive statue of a European in front of a nearby local administration office.

We can make a stop over at the art craft center in Leribe for those who want to shop for local Souvenirs. The tour continues to the heritage site to see the Dinosaur Footprints and explore the village life interacting and learning about the real Basotho culture and their everyday life activities.

The dinosaur footprints at Subeng are embedded in a sandstone slab in a small stream and rank among the most important sites of its type in the country. Discovered in 1955, Subeng incorporates the footprints of at least three and possibly as many as six different species of dinosaur, some with five toes on their feet, and others with three. Look carefully and you will also see fossilized worm trails and mud cracks on other slabs in the riverbed.

Highlights of the tour

Major Bells Tower

Dinosaur Footprints

Lesothosaurus is a monospecific genus of ornithischian dinosaur that lived during the Early Jurassic in what is now South Africa and Lesotho. It was named by paleontologist Peter Galton in 1978, the name meaning "lizard from Lesotho". The genus has only one valid species, Lesothosaurus diagnosticus. Lesothosaurus is one of the most completely known early ornithischians, based on numerous skull and postcranial fossils from the Upper Elliot Formation. It had a simpler tooth and jaw anatomy than later ornithischians and may have been omnivorous in some parts of the year.

Lesothosaurus (Greek for "Lesotho lizard"); pronounced leh-SO-tho-SORE-us

Habitat:

Plains and woodlands of Africa

Historical Period:

Early Jurassic (200-190 million years ago)

Size and Weight:

About six feet long and 10-20 pounds

Diet:

Plants

Distinguishing Characteristics:

Small size; large eyes; bipedal posture; inability to chew

About Lesothosaurus

Lesothosaurus dates from a murky time in geologic history--the early Jurassic period--when the first dinosaurs had just split into the two main dinosaur groups, saurischian ("lizard-hipped") and ornithischian ("bird-hipped") dinosaurs. Some paleontologists insist that the small, bipedal, plant-eating Lesothosaurus was a very early ornithopod dinosaur (which would place it firmly in the ornithischian camp), while others maintain that it predated this important split; yet a third camp proposes that Lesothaurus was a basal thyreophoran, the family of armored dinosaurs that includes stegosaurs and ankylosaurs.

One thing we do know about Lesothosaurus is that it was a confirmed vegetarian; this dinosaur's narrow snout had a beak-like appearance on the end, equipped with about a dozen sharp teeth in front and many more leaf-like, grinding teeth in the back. Like all early dinosaurs, Lesothosaurus was unable to chew its food, and its long hind legs indicate that it was very fast, especially when being pursued by larger predators.

However it winds up being classified, Lesothosaurus isn't the only ancestral dinosaur of the early Jurassic period that has continued to puzzle paleontologists. Lesothosaurus may or may not have been the same creature as Fabrosaurus (the remains of which were discovered much earlier, thus giving the name "Fabrosaurus" precedence if the two genera wind up being merged, or "synonymized"), and it may also have been ancestral to the equally obscure Xiaosaurus, yet another tiny, basal ornithopod native to Asia.