casque

Noun

casque (plural casques)

1. A helmet.
   • He beheld his child dashed to pieces, and almost buried under an enormous helmet, an hundred times more large than any casque ever made for human being, and shaded with a proportionable quantity of black feathers.1764, Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, section I
2. A hard structure on the head of some birds, such as cassowaries, some hornbills and guineafowl, and some reptiles such as chameleons and basilisks.
   • Helmeted Hornbill, Rhinoplax vigil (CR): Restricted to the Thai-Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Borneo, this is the only hornbill species whose casque is solid keratin and therefore carvable.2015, James Eaton et al., “Trade-driven extinctions and near-extinctions of avian taxa in Sundaic Indonesia”, in Forktail, page 2, column 2
   • Smooth Casque-headed Basilisk – Cutete Policía . . . A flat-topped cephalic casque projects over the neck in this species. The posterior edge of this casque is smooth without projecting spines. . . Its vernacular name, cutete policía, is in allusion to the flat casque, said by some to resemble the...1998 Campbell, Jonathan A. Amphibians and reptiles of Northern Guatemala, the Yucatán, and Belize p. 154-155. ISBN: 0-8061-3064-4
3. Synonym of galea.

   Synonyms:

   galea