By Edith Honan
NEW YORK Oct 3 (Reuters) – A new dinosaur the size of a
house cat and described as a cross between “a bird, a vampire
and a porcupine” has been identified in a piece of rock from
South Africa.
University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno, who
published the findings on Wednesday in the online scientific
journal ZooKeys, said in an interview with Reuters he actually
made the discovery of the small-bodied herbivore in 1983.
Sereno, whose research involves mapping the dinosaur family
tree, said he came upon the specimen as a graduate student while
doing research in a Harvard University laboratory and intended
to write about it immediately.
“I said, ‘Whoa!’ I realized it was a new species from the
moment I set eyes on it,” Sereno said. But he says he grew
distracted by other things, and had in mind a more ambitious
research project.
“There was always a danger that someone would discover it
and write about it, and I would read about it,” he said, but
added it was all for the best: “Hey, I’m smarter than I was
then.”
The strange-looking species, which Sereno has named
Pegomastax africanus, or “thick jaw from Africa,” lived between
100 million and 200 million years ago.
“I describe it as a bird, a vampire and a porcupine,” Sereno
said. It had the weight of a small house cat and stood less than
a foot (30 cm) off of the ground.
It had a thick jaw and a blunt beak with a “heightened tooth
that sticks down, dagger-like,” Sereno said. He said it would
have been part of one of three groups that form the base of the
dinosaur tree.
(Reporting by Edith Honan; Editing by Sandra Maler)
