Sun October 7, 2012 New Dinosaur Was A Small, Fanged Vegetarian
Originally published on Sun October 7, 2012 11:10 pm A small,
fanged dinosaur called Pegomastax africanus was identified this
week, more than half a century after its skeleton was dug up in
South Africa. The dinosaur looked like a fierce cross between a
chicken and a porcupine, and had long fangs which it used to eat
plants and compete for mates. Pegomastax was a diminutive beast,
standing less than two feet tall and weighing no more than a
small house cat. Paleontologist Paul Sereno discovered the
dinosaur. He originally came across the skeleton in 1983 in the
back rooms of the Harvard Museum of Natural History, where it
had been stored since the mid-1960s waiting to be cleaned and
prepared. Decades after he first laid eyes on the skeleton,
Sereno finally published his description of Pegomastax this week
in the online journal ZooKeys. On finding the fossil as a
graduate student nearly 30 years ago "A professor [at Harvard],
Alfred Crompton famou