Strange dinosaur from Morocco with “armor” of thorns

About 165 million years ago, in a coastal plain in Morocco, he lived one of the most bizarre dinosaurs recorded, with impressive “armor” and thorns, some up to one meter long, which looks like no other known creature.

Researchers announced on Wednesday the discovery of many fossils in the Atlas Mountains, near the city of Bouleman, which belong to a Jurassian dinosaur named Spicomellus. About 4 meters in length and weight, probably ranging from 1 to 2 tonnes, Spicomellus is the oldest known member of the Angylosaur, shielded, slow -moving herbivores that walked on the four legs.

Spicomellus’s “armor” is incredibly strange, different from any other dinosaur or any other animal, alive or disappeared, we have ever discovered, “said Paleontologist Richard Butler’s Paleontologist Richard Batler at the University of Berm.

“It had not only a series of sharp, long thorns on every side, something unknown to any other animal, but also thorns corresponding to golf sticks protruding like a collar around his neck,” Butler added.

This impressive “armor” may have had a dual function on the one hand as a defense against large sarcophagus dinosaurs, on the other hand as a means of demonstrating partners.

Richard Butler noted that “the armor certainly had some defensive function, but it is difficult to imagine how the thorns of a meter length around the neck were used. They look too much. “

Suzana Meidment, paleontist vertebrate and main author of the study by the London Museum of Natural History, explained that in living animals, features without obvious practical use and that seem annoying, such as the deer’s horns or the tail of the peacock.

“They could be used for courtyards or demonstration of sovereignty, or even in battles between members of the same kind in claiming partners. Spicomellus thorns are completely impossible and possibly annoying in dense vegetation, for example. Thus, we find it possible that the animal has developed this elaborate armor as a means of demonstration, perhaps mating, “she added.

Although fossils do not represent a complete skeleton, the head is absent, some remains have allowed us to understand Spicomellus. What the researchers knew about dinosaur previously came from only a side fragment described in 2021, before the new fossils were found in 2022 and 2023.

Its back was covered with rows of thorns, which protruded from its own sides. It also had a bone collar with plates and two pairs of thornies protruding outward over the neck – one of them reached 87 cm and was probably longer as the animal lived. It also had a bone “shield” in the basin and two large thorns protruding above the hips.

Finally, the characteristic merged vertebrae of the tail suggest that Spicomellus had a weapon at its end, possibly a bat or some kind of thorns, although it was not found in the fossils.