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Funky Dino

Deep in the heart of Texas, a goofy-looking dinosaur skeleton has been unearthed — and it's got a funny head that makes it look like a dead wringer for Barney, the purple lizard of 90s television fame with the annoyingly cheery voice.

As the Houston Chronicle reports, the dinosaur in question — called Eryops megacephalus — has a wide, grinning smile on a large flat skull that sits on four squat legs. Paleontologist Andre LuJan told the newspaper that he found the skeleton of the semiaquatic ancient amphibian recently in Archer County, in a quarry that dates back to the Permian era, about over 280 million years ago.

"This is an exciting discovery," LuJan told Chron. "It's a well-known animal and not considered rare, but this discovery is significant because even though it's damaged, it is nearly complete, and that is far more uncommon or even rare than finding fragments."

As for its resemblance to certain dinosaurs from the realm of children's fiction... well, come on, just look at the guy, especially with that particular placement of the nose and eye holes:

Texas Size

Rains had uncovered the top of its ridged skull, said LuJan, who showed off a video of the find on Instagram when he first found it in the ground.

What's cool about the dinosaur is that its skull shape suggests that it swallowed up its prey like an alligator or crocodile. Its future home will be the Texas Through Time Fossil Museum, where LuJan is the director and which contains a treasure trove of specimens from long ago, such as more dinosaurs and petrified wood.

LuJan is in the catbird seat when it comes to dinosaurs. Texas isn't just known for its rich deposit of oil and gas, but as a state lousy with the fossilized bones of ancient monsters — with more than 20 types of dinos found across the state, including the imprint of dinosaur tracks in Dinosaur Valley State Park.

Another park in Texas boasts more than 20 mammoth remains from the Pleistocene Epoch, the last ice age, which lasted from about 2.8 million to 11,700 years ago.

And the state is still revealing traces of its ancient past; earlier this year, college students were helping unearth the fragments of an Alamosaurus in Texas's Big Bend National Park.

Considered one of the the largest dinosaurs to have roamed North America, the long-necked Alamosaurus could be as long as 100 feet and weigh in at a hefty 50 tons — proving once and for all that everything in Texas is indeed huge.

More on dinosaurs: Project Says It's Recreating Dinosaur Skin to Make T-Rex Leather, But Is It Really?


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