Bizarre 165-Million-Year-Old Armored Dinosaur Unearthed in Morocco Stuns Scientists

"Spicomellus is one of the strangest dinosaurs we have ever discovered. It is completely different from anything else found elsewhere in the world," says Professor Richard Butler of the University of Birmingham and co-lead author of the study published in the scientific journal Nature. This discovery of fossils of this ankylosaur dating back 165 million years is "significant" in the sense that it reveals that the dinosaur had 87-centimeter-long bony spikes emerging from its neck and fused to all of its ribs. This is a characteristic that had never been observed before in any other living or extinct vertebrate species, according to the scientists.

Professor Susannah Maidment of the Natural History Museum in London and the University of Birmingham, who co-led the research team, said the discovery of these ankylosaur remains marks a breakthrough in research on this dinosaur. "Now we can confirm without a doubt that the only known ankylosaur from Africa is far stranger than anyone had imagined," she says.

She adds: "Spicomellus had a diversity of plates and spikes extending across its entire body, including meter-long cervical spikes, huge upward-projecting spikes over the hips, and a range of long blade-like spikes, armor pieces made of two long spikes, and shoulder plates. We have never seen anything like this in any other animal before." This discovery in Morocco came after the researcher purchased a rib bone of this ankylosaur from a fossil dealer in Cambridge in 2019.