Tiny New Dinosaur Species Found

Meet Pegomastax africanus, the newest entry to the ranks of dinosaurs. T-Rex it is not. The little guy was maybe 2 feet long and weighed less than a housecat, reports the New York Times. Pego did have what the National Geographic calls "vampire-like fangs," but it used them to eat plants and maybe nip in self-defense. It didn't eat meat.

With a beak like a parrot and quills like a porcupine, University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno says it probably looked like a "strange little bird" as it foraged among plants. In fact, if you were around southern Africa about 200 million years ago, it might have made a nice pet, he says, "if you could train it not to nip you." (More Pegomastax africanus stories.)