This dinosaur looks like some taxidermist is trying to pull a fast one, but it's a model of what scientists think Pegomastax africanus may have looked like. And it's tiny -only about two feet long. You'd hate to get nipped with those teeth!
Covered in porcupine-like quills and sporting a blunt, parrot-like beak, P. africanus would've looked like a "strange little bird," said Sereno, a paleontologist with the University of Chicago.Read more about P. africanus at National Geographic News.
But its fangs, Sereno argues, were more like those of the piglike peccary (picture) or fanged deer, or water chevrotain (video)—modern-day, plant-eating mammals that use their teeth for self-defense and foraging.
The species, he added, would have lived along forested rivers in southern Africa around the time the supercontinent Pangaea had just begun to split into the northern and southern landmasses.
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