This 'magical' dinosaur specimen emerged from the ground like a polished jewel

It was a cloudy morning in southeast Mongolia. Paleontologist Chinzorig Tsogtbaatar and several colleagues set out by foot from their campsite to a rocky outcrop dating back some 110 million years to the early Cretaceous.

"Then, after 15 to 20 minutes, I saw something [on the] other side of the hill," says Tsogtbaatar. It was a bright object of some sort. "It [didn't] look like a rock," he recalls. "It [was] very unusual."

Once he got closer, Tsogtbaatar — who now works at North Carolina State University — knew exactly what it was. A dome-shaped skull. It turned out that Tsogtbaatar had just discovered a new species of pachycephalosaur, a unique group of dinosaurs defined by their thick, bony, hemispherical skulls but about which little else is known.

Chinzorig Tsogtbaatar /

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