The Cephalozygoptera is a newly discovered extinct suborder of Odonata with a rich fossil record. They are rather similar to damselflies in many ways, but are clearly distinguished by their heads, which are more rounded, with eyes set closer together, not protruding. For over a century and a half, paleontologists have described many species in this group, but always classified them as damselflies, thinking that their odd head shapes were only distortions produced by pressures during fossilization. Now, this odd head shape is understood to be their actual shape in life. With this new understanding, we see the suborder stretching back into the early Cretaceous alongside the dinosaurs and thriving across the Northern Hemisphere after the dinosaurs were gone until they were last seen only about ten million years ago in Spain. Understanding the Cephalozygoptera makes the history of Odonata richer and more interesting, particularly in the time since the extinction of the dinosaurs, as the world became modern.
The New Suborder Cephalozygoptera and their world by Bruce Archibald
