Fossils of ugly cow-sized reptile unearthed

A cow-sized reptile that may have been one of nature’s ugliest beasts roamed an isolated desert before the age of dinosaurs.

The creature’s genus name — bunostegos — means “knobby roof” and gives a clue to its appearance.

About the size of a domestic cow, the plant- eater had bulbous tumour- like growths sprouting from its head and bony armour down its back.

Fossils from bunostegos dating back around 260 million years to the Permian era were found in what is now northern Niger in Africa.

Back in the Permian the Earth was dominated by a single continent called Pangea. Bunostegos lived in an isolated desert in the middle of Pangea with a unique fauna.

Cousins of the creature have previously been unearthed which also had bony knobs on their skulls. But those of bunostegos are the largest and most bulbous ever discovered.

The find suggests that pareiasaurs, the reptile family to which bunostegos belonged, may have evolved in isolation for millions of years. Climatic conditions may have corralled bunostegos, along with several other reptiles, amphibians and plants, in the centre of the supercontinent.

Study leader Christian Sidor, from the University of Washington in Seattle, US, said: “Our work supports the theory that central Pangea was climatically isolated, allowing a unique relict fauna to persist into the late Permian.” Details of the find appear in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.