A RESEARCH team from the South African Museum in Cape Town has found fossilised remains of long-extinct reptiles, the most valuable specimen being a perfectly preserved skull of a little known carnivorous reptile known as Burnetia, near Murraysburg in the Karoo. The leader of the team, Dr Roger Smith, said the Burnetia skull was found almost by accident while they were excavating a large fossilised skeleton of a Dicynodon. The skull is unusual in that it has several bony lumps or protuberances at the back, above the orbits and a single one on top of its long snout. Witwatersrand university’s Professor Bruce Rubidge confirmed that this was a significant find in that “Burnetia fossils are so rare that only five skulls have been discovered in over 160 years of collecting in the Karoo. Because the snout of this specimen is undamaged we hope it will give crucial clues as to where this enigmatic group of reptiles belongs on the evolutionary tree,” Rubidge said. The animal was a carnivore about the size of a Collie dog and lived on the ancient Karoo floodplains some 253 million years ago, mainly by scavenging carcasses such as that of the large Dicynodon.