Discovery of a new species of vegetarian dinosaur dating back 200 million years
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himMany have already renamed it the dinosaur vegetarian. And the Pegomastax africanus, a new species recently discovered by a research team of University of Chicago. In reality, the fossils of this prehistoric creature had been found in the 60s during an expedition to South Africa but they had gone into oblivion, kept at Harvard University.
But the Chicago paleontologists, led by prof. Paul C. Clear, they decided to learn more about the strange animal. Yeah, weird. In fact, his skin was covered with quills, similar to those of the current one porcupine. And not only. Scientists were also intrigued by the rather small size of the dinosaur, no longer than 2 meters, including tail (weighing less than that of a cat) and teeth. The latter, pointed and arranged in several rows, had made us think of a fearsome hunter and meat eater.
This was not the case. The nano-dinosaur in fact he was convinced vegetarian and his teeth were used to cut the plants he ate. According to Chicago experts, the prehistoric lizard belongs to the family of heterodontosaurids (literally multi-toothed reptiles) and dates back to about 200 million years ago. His remains were found inside a reddish rock, which has partly preserved them in good condition.
But not only. THE early specimens of dinosaur for a short time would have had a sort of beak similar to that of parrots, which hid a couple of shooting canines and sharp teethi, but innocent and used only for cutting plants to eat and for detaching fruit.
For Sereno and colleagues, it is very rare for a creature with such characteristics as wide jaws and long, sharp canines. If you want to, could be limited to the consumption of vegetables. Some scientists have hypothesized that the consumption of meat, or at least of insects, constituted a large part of the diet of heterodontosaurids. The dental system of these creatures would then further evolve to give rise to that of the famous Triceratops and Stegosaurs, also herbivorous dinosaurs. And the quills? According to experts, the bizarre coating of bristles similar to that of the porcupine, it was a mechanism for self-defense.
If the hypotheses were confirmed, i the first dinosaurs that inhabited the Earth ate only plants. Vegetarians from the beginning.
The study was published in the ZooKeys.
