Angola: Final frontier for fossils

In the past, most people who went to Angola were searching for oil, diamonds or landmines.

Now, the country is also proving a big draw for fossil hunters - known in the scientific community as palaeontologists - who have described Angola as a "museum in the ground".

Angola was closed off for many years because of its three-decade long civil war, which only ended in 2002, so few scientists have had the chance to visit.

Those getting the chance now are not leaving disappointed. Louis Jacobs, of the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, says:

"Angola is the final frontier for palaeontology. Due to the war, there has been little research carried out... but now we are getting in finally and there is so much to find.

Since then, the majority of the skulls and skeletons uncovered by the team have been from turtles, sharks, plesiosaurs and mosasaurs, of which there is even an angolasauras species.

Plesiosaurs and mosasaurs are not technically terrestrial dinosaurs at all but marine reptiles related to lizards and snakes.