More than 200 million years ago in what's now southern Utah, crocodile-like creatures called phytosaurs roamed the landscape. Now, their fossilized skeletons have been found—on land that fell within the original boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument, before the Trump administration shrunk the monument by nearly 85 percent.

The fossil fragments include three toothy, long-snouted phytosaur skulls. It turns out that the site had been looted before paleontologists got to it—but some scientific sleuthing by researchers, led by Museums of Western Colorado paleontologist Robert Gay, let them track down a missing skull fragment that had been poached.

“Based on our small, initial excavation, we believe that this 63-meter site may be the densest area of Triassic period fossils in the