Incredible dinosaur with thorns armor rewrite the history of evolution

The most unusual dinosaur in the world is even stranger than scientists initially thought. Your whole body is covered with spikes.

Although the bones of Spicomellus afer They were already different from any known animal, recently discovered fossils revealed that their entire skeleton was covered by extraordinary bone that mediate up to one meter in length.

The fossils of the incredible dinosaur, found in Boulemane, Morocco, reveals that the extensive defenses of the anquilosaurs will have evolved much sooner what was thought.

The discovery was presented in a published last week in the magazine Nature.

Em 2019, Susannah Maidmentpaleontologist of the natural History Museum of London, acquired a dinosaur rib bone from a fossil merchant in Cambridge.

The bone had Protective thorns that were fused directly on its surface, something that had never been seen before in the animal kingdom. Maidment and their team gave the amazing dinosaur the name of Spicomellus afer.

Although if he knew that the fossil came close to the city of Boulemane in Morocco, its exact origins were unknown. To find more fossils of the fascinating species, Maidment had to become detectiveto researcher.

A team of British, American and Moroccan paleontologists then set up an expedition to the region to look for more Spicomellus remains, and brought much more samples of skeleton of Spicomellus of what they could have expected, who revealed that tODO The body of the dinosaur was covered with spikes.

Beyond your spiked ribs, the Spicomellus had huge spikes to project your hips, a gun on the tailbones in the shape of a blade running on its sides and a bone collar surrounded by spikes. The longest is believed to have they had More than a meter in lengthstand out on either side of your neck.

What makes this even more amazing is that, with 165 million years, o Spicomellus and the older ankylosaur. Maidment says that their “absolutely bizarre” fossils are changing the way scientists think these armored dinosaurs have evolved.

“When we originally baptized the Spicomellusthere was no doubt if it was even an ankylosauro, ”recalls Susannah.“ Now we can not confirm no doubt that this interpretation was correct, but also that the only known anquilossaur of Africa is much stranger than anyone imagined“.

“Finding such an armor in a primitive ankylosaur changes our understanding of how these dinosaurs have evolved. It shows how significant the dinosaurs of Africa are, and how important it is to improve our understanding of them.”

Richard ButlerProfessor at the University of Birmingham, who co-delineated the new article on the Spicomellusadds that the recently described fossils are “a incredibly significant“.

“O Spicomellus and one of the strangest dinosaurs that we have already found, ”says Richard.“ It’s completely different from any other found anywhere in the world. ”

“I think will really capture the imagination Of people around the world, and tell us a lot about the initial evolution of tanks similar to anchillosaurs. ”

The biggest spikes of the dinosaur measure an impressive 87 centimeters in length and emerge from a bone collar that was around your neck. When the animal was alive, however, they would probably have been even more. Researchers think they were covered by a keratin sheath similar to cows horns.

“This spike collar would have been one of several around the neck From Spicomellus, ”says Maidment.“ Although other ankylosaures have cervical collars made of a ring of bone plates, there is nothing like this. ”

“It’s particularly strangebecause this is the oldest known ankylosaur. We could expect some later species to have inherited similar characteristics, but they didn’t inherit“He adds.

Another confusing aspect of the dinosaur is its tail. Although the end of Spicomellus’s tail was not found, the surviving bones suggest that it ended in a similar clava or a similar weapon. This is unexpected because historically it was thought that this type of weaponry has only evolved into later species. Recently found fossils challenge this assumption.

“The combination of a weapon on the tail and a sacral shield, armor plates that protect the hips, suggests that many of the key adaptations of the ankylosauros existed at the time of Spicomellus“.

In nature, highly exaggerated characteristics of an animal are often caused by sexual selection. These include, for example, Feathers of the tail of a male peacock or the horns of a deer.

Maidment and his colleagues suspect that this It may also have been the case with the elaborate armor of Spicomellus.

“It would have been very energetically to produce and carry such an extraordinary armor, and probably limited how well Spicomellus could move,” explains Susannah. “So we thought you were probably using your armor for some kind of display“.

“We speculate that the armor has evolved first for defense and was later co-opted to attract partners and display to rivals“Concludes the researcher.