Hard-headed: Prehistoric Texas Reptile Boasted Bony Domed Skull

In a warm, lush region of West Texas crisscrossed with rivers, a bizarre reptile roamed the Triassic Period landscape about 228 million years ago, boasting a bony domed head unlike almost any creature that ever appeared on Earth. Scientists on Thursday described the reptile, named Triopticus primus, based on a fossilized partial skull dug up in 1940 near Big Spring, Texas, that had long languished in a drawer in a University of Texas paleontology collection. Its head resembled a...

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