A dinosaur nicknamed one of the “larger” ever found has an elaborate armory of long bone points and a tail weapon, according to the results published in the Nature Scientific Review.
Spicomellus, which traversed the earth 165 million years ago, is the oldest ankylosaur in the world, a group of herbivore of dinosaurs known for their bodies in the shape of tanks.
The image of spicomellus paleontologists was based on a single bone of the coast found in Morocco in 2019.
But the newly discovered remains helped scientists form a clearer image of the unusual dinosaur.
Fossils have shown that he had bone peaks merged over all his ribs – something never seen before in any other kind of vertebrate living or off, according to research published on Wednesday.
Richard Butler, professor at the University of Birmingham and the project co-leader, told CBS News BBC News that it was the “punk rocker” of his time.
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Butler called fossils “incredibly significant discovery”, adding that “Spicomellus is one of the strangest dinosaurs that we have ever discovered”.
The co-leader of the Butler project, Susannah Maidment of the Natural History Museum in London, added that it was surprising that the points were fused directly on the OS, reported the BBC.
“We do not see this in any other animal, living or off,” she said. “It is absolutely covered with truly strange points and protuberances over the whole back of the animal, including a bone collar that wraps around its neck and a kind of weapon at the end of its tail, therefore a most unusual dinosaur.”
The discovery is so unusual that Butler and Maidment examine if the theories on the way in which ankylosaurs have evolved should be reassessed.
These dinosaurs survived late in time that dinosaurs were on earth, in a period known as Cretaceous, reported the BBC. The end of this period saw the emergence of Large carnivorous predatorsLike T. Rex, we had therefore thought that the ankylosaurs started with small simple armored plates on the back, which then became larger and larger to protect themselves from these large animals, according to Butler.
“If you had asked me what I expected that the known ankylosaurus seems to seem to have said something with a fairly simple armor,” Butler told BBC News. “Instead, we have an animal bristling with spikes like a hedgehog, the bizarre that we have ever found in any animal, far from the range of armor seen in subsequent ankylosaurs.”
