Labrosaurus stechowi Janensch, 1920

Labrosaurus stechowi Janensch, 1920

Ostafrikasaurus crassiserratus Buffetaut, 2012

When Werner Janensch examined an approximately 4.9-centimeter-long tooth found at Tendaguru, he tentatively assigned it to the genus Labrosaurus , a member of a family of carnivorous dinosaurs. The genus had been introduced in 1879 by American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh to accommodate a species discovered in North America, and additional species were assigned to it later. 79 Marsh did not explain why he chose the name, but Labro probably derives from the Latin word labra, meaning “lip.”

In 2012, French paleontologist Eric Buffetaut described a new genus with a single species— Ostafrikasaurus crassiserratus —on the basis of one of the teeth that Janensch had originally classified as Labrosaurus stechowi . 83 Buffetaut created the conspicuously German genus name in an explicit reference to the find’s colonial provenance; the specific name is a composite of the Latin words crassus, meaning “thick,” and serratus, meaning “serrated.” Taken together, the name means “coarsely serrated East Africa lizard.” 84