Spikes, A Tail Weapon And A Shield: Was This The World's Weirdest Dinosaur?

“We conscionable couldn’t judge really weird it was and really dissimilar immoderate different dinosaur, aliases so immoderate different animal we cognize of, live aliases extinct,” said Richard Butler, task co-lead and a paleontologist astatine nan University of Birmingham successful England.

The chance to spot and study nan Spicomellus fossils was “spine-tingling,” said Butler.

It wasn’t conscionable those progressive successful nan task who were enthused.

“This is genuinely 1 of nan weirdest, wackiest dinosaurs I’ve ever seen,” said Steve Brusatte, a vertebrate paleontologist astatine nan University of Edinburgh who was not progressive successful nan research.

“It has bony spikes protruding from each complete its body, for illustration it’s immoderate benignant of reptilian porcupine,” he said Thursday. “If you were a meat-eating dinosaur surviving backmost successful nan Jurassic period, you would enactment good distant from this animal.”

Brusatte added: “It’s a awesome illustration of really location are still truthful galore caller things to discover. Until these fossils were found, we had nary inclination that an animal this awesome had ever lived.”

Maidment, nan study co-lead, said nan find showed that a batch much investigation needs to beryllium done successful Africa, pinch countries for illustration Morocco an untapped golden excavation for dinosaur research.

“It is wildly undersampled compared to nan different continents,” said Maidment, from London’s National History Museum.

Maidment said that nan Spicomellus project, which really began successful 2018, faced respective hurdles on nan way, including nan Covid-19 pandemic.

The U.K. squad was group to alert retired to meet its Moroccan counterparts for nan task when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a lockdown, yet delaying their plans until 2022.

Despite those challenges, nan investigation task has proved to beryllium a awesome measurement guardant for subject successful Morocco.

“This study is helping to thrust guardant Moroccan science. We’ve ne'er seen dinosaurs for illustration this before, and there’s still a batch much this region has to offer,” said Driss Ouarhache, who led nan Moroccan team.