In Depth
When the description of Pegomastax was first publically released news headlines of ‘Dracula dinosaur’ and ‘Fanged vampire parrot’ soon flooded the internet. Pegomastax however seems to be one of the heterodontosaurid dinosaurs, and although some palaeontologists have speculated that these kinds of dinosaurs used their teeth to eat small prey like lizards and insects, others including Paul Sereno, the palaeontologist who described Pegomastix are of the opinion that heterodontosaurids were mostly if not exclusively herbivores. This means that the enlarged teeth of Pegomastax that look like vampire fangs were probably used for a combination of display as well as practical tools for uprooting plants.
The holotype specimen of Pegomastax (the fossils that the genus is described from) were first collected in a 1966-67 expedition, yet it was not until 1983 that they first received any further attention when Sereno noticed them as being unusual looking. It would be almost another thirty years before Sereno was finally able to get round to studying these fossils due to other work commitments. To be fair though this work included heavy research and contributions to the discoveries of other African paleofauna of the Mesozoic including the predatory theropod dinosaurs Carcharodontosaurus and Suchomimus, the specialised sauropod Nigersaurus, the giant crocodile Sarcosuchus, as well as the ‘boar croc’ Kaprosuchus among many others. Also, the type species of Pegomastax was originally written as P. africanus. However, africanus is feminine whereas the word mastax is actually masculine, something that led to the type species name being modified to africana, in order to be grammatically correct.
Further Reading
Taxonomy, morphology, masticatory function and phylogeny of heterodontosaurid dinosaurs - P. C. Sereno - 2012.
