“We just couldn’t believe how weird it was and how unlike any other dinosaur, or indeed any other animal we know of, alive or extinct,” said Richard Butler, project co-lead and a paleontologist at the University of Birmingham in England.
The chance to see and study the Spicomellus fossils was “spine-tingling,” said Butler.
It wasn’t just those involved in the project who were enthused.
“This is truly one of the weirdest, wackiest dinosaurs I’ve ever seen,” said Steve Brusatte, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the research.
“It has bony spikes protruding from all over its body, like it’s some kind of reptilian porcupine,” he said Thursday. “If you were a meat-eating dinosaur living back in the Jurassic period, you would stay well away from this animal.”
Brusatte added: “It’s a great example of how there are still so many new things to discover. Until these fossils were found, we had no inclination that an animal this fantastic had ever lived.”
Maidment, the study co-lead, said the discovery showed that a lot more research needs to be done in Africa, with countries like Morocco an untapped gold mine for dinosaur research.
“It is wildly undersampled compared to the other continents,” said Maidment, from London’s National History Museum.
Maidment said that the Spicomellus project, which actually began in 2018, faced several hurdles along the way, including the Covid-19 pandemic.
The U.K. team was set to fly out to meet its Moroccan counterparts for the project when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a lockdown, ultimately delaying their plans until 2022.
Despite those challenges, the research project has proved to be a major step forward for science in Morocco.
“This study is helping to drive forward Moroccan science. We’ve never seen dinosaurs like this before, and there’s still a lot more this region has to offer,” said Driss Ouarhache, who led the Moroccan team.
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