A dinosaur dubbed 'the world's most unusual' due to its 'punk-style' spines has turned out to be even stranger than palaeontologists had realised. New research published in Nature suggests that Spicomellus afer - already known for its bizarre armour - carried a tail weapon more than 30 million years before any other ankylosaur, and sported a collar of metre-long spikes protruding from either side of its neck. Spicomellus is the earliest-known ankylosaur, a group of armoured dinosaurs, and lived more than 165 million years ago in what is now Morocco. It was also the first of its kind to be discovered on the African continent. The species was initially described in 2021 from a single rib bone. But fresh fossil finds have revealed that it was even more extraordinary than first thought. The animal's ribs were fused with bony spikes, a feature not seen in any other living or extinct vertebrate. Some of the spikes reached 87cm in length and would have been even longer in life, forming part of a distinctive spiky collar around the neck - much like those worn by punk fans from the 1970s onwards. Professor Susannah Maidment of the Natural History Museum in London and the University of Birmingham, who co-led the research, said: "To find such elaborate armour in an early ankylosaur changes our understanding of how these dinosaurs evolved. It shows just how significant Africa's dinosaurs are, and how important it is to improve our understanding of them." She added: "Spicomellus had a diversity of plates and spikes extending from all over its body, including metre-long neck spikes, huge upwards-projecting spikes over the hips, and a whole range of long, blade-like spikes, pieces of armour made up of two long spikes, and plates down the shoulder. We've never seen anything like this in any animal before." Researchers believe the extravagant spikes may have been used for display - to attract mates or intimidate rivals - rather than purely for defence. Later ankylosaurs developed simpler, more robust armour, probably in response to growing threats from large predatory dinosaurs and other carnivores during the Cretaceous period. Although the end of Spicomellus' tail has not been recovered, fossilised vertebrae show signs of fusion, forming a structure known as a "handle". This feature is only known from ankylosaurs with tail clubs, which otherwise evolved tens of millions of years later.
Newly Studied 'Punk' Ankylosaur Is 'World's Strangest Dinosaur'

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