Hmm, I've decided to reload the prior version because it may be a disappearing object or something I did. Here is a screen capture of what it looks like when selected in the outliner. It also chopped the top off the reference. Formerly, the polygon was a skull shape. I was cleaning up the geometry for the nose cavity.
I solved this problem after it nearly convinced me I needed a new computer. H Recap of the problem: 1. When I hit 3 to smooth polygons in Maya, they would often vanish entirely or stretch out. 2. When I loaded my .ma file saved in ASCII the files would do things similar to the image above, with geometry exploding or…