Happy Pride Month! And Happy Dinosaur Day! Heterodontosaurus is a genus of heterodontosaurid dinosaur that lived throughout what is now southern Africa during the Early Jurassic around 200β190 million years ago. The first specimen consisting of a crushed but nearly complete skull and some now lost associated postcranial remains, was unearthed from the side of mount Tyinindini at an altitude of about 1,890 m (6,201 ft), during the BritishβSouth African expedition to South Africa and Basutoland (former name of Lesotho) in 1961β1962. Today, it is housed in the Iziko South African Museum. The animal was scientifically described and named in 1962 by paleontologists Alfred Walter Crompton and Alan J. Charig. The genus name refers to the different-shaped teeth, and the specific name honors George C. Tuck, a director of Austin Motor Company, who helped fund the expedition. In 1966, a second specimen of Heterodontosaurus consisting of a near complete articulated skeleton was discovered at the Voyizane locality, in the Elliot Formation of the Stormberg Group of rock formations, giving a much better understanding of the animal. These finds were remarkably important to the understanding of dinosaur evolution as prior next to no early ornithischian dinosaurs were known. Heterodontosaurus helped establish that ornithischia and saurischia were directly related and that dinosauria was a natural monophyletic group. Something not previously thought to be the case. Since then several additional specimens including multiple skulls have been recovered. Reaching around 3ft 10inches to 5ft 9 inches (1.18 to 1.75m) in length and 4.4 to 22lbs (2 to 10kgs) in weight, whilst heterodontosaurus was small for a dinosaur it was one of the largest members of its family. The skull was elongated, narrow, and triangular when viewed from the side. The fronts of the jaws were covered in a horny beak. It had three types of teeth; in the upper jaw, small, incisor-like teeth were followed by long, canine-like tusks. A gap divided the tusks from the chisel-like cheek-teeth. The body was short with a long tail. The five-fingered forelimbs were long and relatively robust, whereas the hind-limbs were long, slender, and had four toes. This ancient bipedal dinosaur is thought to have been herbivorous or possibly omnivorous feeding upon a variety of plants, insects, and possibly small vertebrates.
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