New species of fanged miniature dinosaur from South Africa identified

A dinosaur the size of a house cat that lived some 200 million years ago has been discovered in South Africa. Named Pegomastax africanus, the small animal is a cross between bird, vampire, and porcupine, according to a University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno who identified the species by analyzing its fossil found in the 1960s. It hails from a line of small, fanged dinosaurs and probably ate mostly fruit. “It would be a nice pet—if you could train it not to nip you,” Sereno said.