All Yesterdays #1: Heterodontosaurus hunting

This illustration stemmed from a conversation I had with Darren Naish and Jaime Headden at SVP in Denver in 1999 (which makes me feel enormously aged). We were discussing the unchallenged assumption that all ornithischians were exclusively herbivorous at all times. What if some scavenged? What if some hunted? How would we know?

Here I have restored Heterodontosaurus tucki as an arboreal ambush predator, with a group of three dropping from a conifer branch onto an alarmed Massospondylus carinatus in the Early Jurassic of South Africa. Unlike most little bipedal ornithischians, Heterodontosaurus had relatively long arms, and hands with long fingers and large claws, which may have served some kind of climbing and/or raptorial function.