ALAMOGORDO, N.M. (AP) — A 300 million-year-old plant-eating reptile fossil is returning home to southern New Mexico.
The Alamogordo Daily News reports "Gordodon" is slated to come home to Alamogordo this week after spending the last few years in Albuquerque.
Gordodon's fossilized skeleton is incomplete but the remains showed it to be a sail-backed reptile that ate a specialized plant diet.
Such specialized plant diets were not known in reptiles older than 200 million years.
In 2013, a University of Oklahoma student on a geology class trip discovered the fossil of a Permian age plant-eating reptile fossil near Alamogordo. The fossil was taken to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque.