You think you know a dinosaur, and then it turns out it had 3-foot spikes protruding from its neck, a weapon on its tail and extravagant armor.
The creature’s presence some 165 million years ago in what is now Morocco has been known for years. But only now has the Spicomellus been revealed in all its bizarre beauty, forcing a rethink among scientists.
“This dinosaur is totally unlike anything else that we have ever seen,” paleontologist Susannah Maidment told NBC News in a phone interview. She co-led a team of researchers studying the Jurassic-era beast’s fossilized remains in the Atlas Mountains near the Moroccan town of Boulemane.
Their findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The Spicomellus is the world’s oldest ankylosaur, a group of wide-bodied, short-limbed and heavily armored herbivores that walked on four legs.
Their evolution “is shrouded in mystery due to a poor fossil record,” according to the study. A single rib fragment described in 2021 offered our only partial view of the Spicomellus — until now.
As well as short spikes covering its back, the dinosaur had a pelvic shield and two large spikes poking out above its hips. It also had fused tail vertebrae that suggested a weapon at the end of its tail.
The “ornate armor” may have served two roles, namely defense against large meat-eating dinosaurs and as a display to attract mates, according to the study.
“We just couldn’t believe how weird it was and how unlike any other dinosaur, or indeed any other animal we know of, alive or extinct,” said Richard Butler, project co-lead and a paleontologist at the University of Birmingham in England.
The chance to see and study the Spicomellus fossils was “spine-tingling,” said Butler.
It wasn’t just those involved in the project who were enthused.
“This is truly one of the weirdest, wackiest dinosaurs I’ve ever seen,” said Steve Brusatte, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the research.
“It has bony spikes protruding from all over its body, like it’s some kind of reptilian porcupine,” he said Thursday. “If you were a meat-eating dinosaur living back in the Jurassic period, you would stay well away from this animal.”
Brusatte added: “It’s a great example of how there are still so many new things to discover. Until these fossils were found, we had no inclination that an animal this fantastic had ever lived.”
Maidment, a study co-lead, said the discovery showed that a lot more research needs to be done in Africa, with countries like Morocco an untapped gold mine for dinosaur research.
“It is wildly undersampled compared to the other continents,” said Maidment, from London’s National History Museum.
Maidment said that the Spicomellus project, which actually began in 2018, faced several hurdles along the way, including the Covid-19 pandemic.
The U.K. team was set to fly out to meet its Moroccan counterparts for the project when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a lockdown, ultimately delaying their plans until 2022.
Despite those challenges, the research project has proved to be a major step forward for science in Morocco.
“This study is helping to drive forward Moroccan science. We’ve never seen dinosaurs like this before, and there’s still a lot more this region has to offer,” said Driss Ouarhache, who led the Moroccan team.
