Knobbly reptile roamed vast ancient desert

A bizarre reptile with knobbly growths on its head roamed a vast, isolated desert about 260 million years ago, researchers say.

New fossils from northern Niger in Africa have been described in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

The distinctive creature belongs to a new genus of pareiasaur - plant-eating creatures that flourished during the Permian period.

The cow-sized specimen has been named Bunostegos, which means "knobby roof".

During Permian times, the Earth was dominated by a single supercontinent called Pangaea.

Animal and plant life dispersed broadly across the land, as documented by identical fossil species found on multiple modern continents.

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Duck-Bill Dinosaurs Had Plant-Pulverizing Teeth More Advanced Than Horses

ScienceDaily (Oct. 4, 2012) — A team of paleontologists and engineers has found that duck-billed dinosaurs had an amazing capacity to chew tough and abrasive plants with grinding teeth more complex than those of cows, horses, and other well-known modern grazers. Their study, which is published October 4 in the journal Science, is the first to recover material properties from fossilized teeth.

Duck-bill dinosaurs, also known as hadrosaurids, were the dominant plant-eaters in what are now Europe, North America, and Asia during the Late Cretaceous about 85 million years ago. With broad jaws bearing as many as 1,400 teeth, hadrosaurids were previously thought to have chewing surfaces similar to other reptiles, which have teeth composed of just two tissues -- enamel, a hard hypermineralized material, and orthodentine, a soft bonelike tissue. But paleontologists who study the fossilized teeth of these animals in detail suspected that they were not that simple.

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121004141753.htm