Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig dev. NS
Answer
dev. 2 NS ns-tld5.charlestonroadregistry.com.
dev. 2 NS ns-tld3.charlestonroadregistry.com.
dev. 2 NS ns-tld2.charlestonroadregistry.com.
dev. 2 NS ns-tld1.charlestonroadregistry.com.
dev. 2 NS ns-tld4.charlestonroadregistry.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0