Slog

News & Arts

Line Out

Music & the City
at Night

« The Problem With Netflix's "Legacy"… | Dear Levi's, Your Jeans Are Garbage… »

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Dinosaurs Today's Dinosaur News

Posted by Mary Traverse on Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 2:10 PM

Screen_shot_2012-10-03_at_1.59.19_PM.png

Tyler Keillor/The University of Chicago

A new dinosaur, Pegomastax africanus, is being described as a "bizarre", "cat-sized", "Dracula-like" herbivore with "porcupine-like bristles." AWESOME. Identified by University of Chicago professor and paleontologist Paul Sereno, the remains were originally discovered in South Africa in the 1960s.

From a NYTimes.com article on the subject:

In a report published Wednesday in the online journal ZooKeys, Paul C. Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago and a dinosaur specialist, described the strange anatomy of the newfound member of the heterodontosaur family and gave the new species the name Pegomastax africanus, or “thick jaw from Africa.” He also apologized in an interview for not getting around sooner to this piece of research.

When he first viewed the specimen at a Harvard laboratory, Dr. Sereno said, “My eyes popped, as it was clear this was a distinct species.”

More on this weird little guy here and here; some photos of a model of Pegomastax africanus (pictured above) by Tyler Keillor, and a video of the making of that model.

FacebookShare

Comments (5) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

Are we sure it didn't have bristles and feathers?

And how certain are we about the coloration?

Posted by Will in Seattle

on October 3, 2012 at 2:21 PM

@1 Until we find a mummy, we can't see scale changes. They seem to be related to color.
But one thing is sure, life was very tough for this creature.

Posted by Pope Peabrain on October 3, 2012 at 3:05 PM

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/…

Posted by rob!

on October 3, 2012 at 3:13 PM

@3
Thanks. That looks so good, I have to print it out and read it in when I'm in a more comfortable position.

Posted by dnt trust me on October 3, 2012 at 3:19 PM

Sorry for not getting around to it sooner sounds very Sereno. It seems he's always jumping from task to task, and he's incredibly busy. When I took a course from him last year, the first lecture didn't happen because he was consulting with an ambassador about some overseas digs and hadn't been told that classes started that week. But props to Sereno on his identification of this odd animal. Such bristles have been seen on psittacosaurs (smaller relatives of ceratopsians), but I'm not sure about heterodontosaurs.

Posted by venomlash on October 3, 2012 at 9:19 PM