Bizarre ankylosaur with spikes is unlike any known dinosaur (earthsky.org)
Posted by Shireen Gonzaga
September 3, 2025
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Scientists have never seen anything like this before!
Ankylosaurs were a group of herbivorous four-legged dinosaurs. They were short, stout creatures built like a tank, notable for body armor such as bony plates that covered most of their body. In late August 2025, scientists announced new details about a strange ankylosaur unearthed in Morocco, Africa, dated at 165 million years old. Spicomellus afer had an odd bony collar lined with spikes, some that were over 3 feet (one meter) long. There were additional spikes all over its body. Moreover, the partial skeleton recovered by the team showed evidence of a tail weapon, a feature not expected in early ankylosaurs.
Richard Butler of the University of Birmingham, a paper co-author, said in a statement:
The researchers published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Nature on August 27, 2025.Seeing and studying the Spicomellus fossils for the first time was spine-tingling. 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. It turns much of what we thought we knew about ankylosaurs and their evolution on its head and demonstrates just how much there still is to learn about dinosaurs.
Spicomellus was 1st described in 2021, based on a rib bone bearing four spines. The Natural History Museum in London acquired the fossil in 2019 from a commercial fossil dealer.
In 2023, English, Moroccan, and American scientists returned to the locality where that rib had been found. There, they were able to get more fossils that a farmer had already dug up, and also excavated some themselves. The partial skeleton from that site included several vertebrae, ribs with spikes, several body plates, and a bony collar with spikes.
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more: https://earthsky.org/earth/ankylosaur-with-spikes-unlike-any-known-dinosaur/
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