A strange fossil pulled from Morocco’s Middle Atlas Mountains has turned out to be the earliest known ankylosaur, and by far one of the weirdest. The dinosaur, Spicomellus afer, had spikes growing through its ribs and an armored neck lined with meter-long blades that jutted out like spears.

At first, researchers weren’t convinced it was real. “The first thing we did was a CT scan to check that it wasn’t fake and that somebody hadn’t stuck spines onto the top of the ring,” Susannah Maidment, a paleontologist at London’s Natural History Museum, told Live Science.

But it passed the test. It came from the Middle Jurassic period and revealed armor fused directly into the skeleton, a feature scientists hadn’t seen before.

Dinosaur With Giant Neck Spikes Found in Morocco

The ankylosaurs we kn

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