A 246-million-year-old skull fossil found in Winterswijk, the Netherlands, sheds new light on the origin and phylogenetic development of placodonts, a group of marine reptiles that lived during the Triassic period. Reconstruction of the juvenile placodont Palatodonta bleekeri (Jaime Chirinos) For around 50 million years, placodonts populated the flat coastal regions of the Tethys Ocean, in modern day Europe and China. The most distinctive feature...
