This dinosaur has scientists in disbelief: “it’s unlike any other dinosaur - or animal alive or dead - that we’ve ever discovered”
Scientists have discovered a new species of dinosaur that is unlike anything they’ve seen before.
Picture the Middle Jurassic landscape of what’s now Morocco, about 165 million years ago. A squat, herbivorous dinosaur, roughly 13 feet in length and tipping the scales at up to two tonnes, ambles across the floodplain.
But this isn’t any typical dinosaur.
Meet Spicomellus afer, the oldest-known member of the armoured ankylosaurs and astoundingly, one of the weirdest creatures scientists have ever documented.
Found in the Atlas Mountains near Boulemane, this creature appears to have had a full-body suit of bony spikes. What astonishes paleontologists isn’t just the spikes’ size, but the fact they are co-ossified — fused directly to the bones, not embedded within the skin.
“The armor of Spicomellus is jaw-droppingly weird, unlike that of any other dinosaur - or any other animal alive or dead - that we’ve ever discovered,” said vertebrate palaeontologist Richard Butler of the University of Birmingham in England, co-leader of the research.
“Not only did it have a series of sharp, long spikes on each of its ribs - unknown elsewhere among animals - but it had spines the length of golf clubs sticking out in a collar around its neck,” he added.
The tail adds to the mystery. Although its tip wasn’t found, its vertebrae form a “handle” structure—one typically seen only in ankylosaurs with tail clubs, pushing back the emergence of tail weapons by about 30 million years, a discovery that turns previous evolutionary assumptions upside down.
“The armour surely had some defensive function, but it’s difficult to imagine how the meter-long spikes around the neck were used for defence. They seem like enormous overkill,” Butler said.
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As to what the spines were used for, researchers believe the answer may lie in showing off, much like peacocks or deer, where the most seemingly impractical evolutionary quirks are often sexual signals. Susannah Maidment of the Natural History Museum in London, said that “they could be used in courtship or territorial displays, or to fight against members of the same species during competitions for mates. Spicomellus’ armour is totally impractical, and would have been a bit annoying in dense vegetation, for example. So we think that it is possible the animal evolved such elaborate armour for some sort of display, perhaps to do with mating."
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