“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 …
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Facebook Tweet Email Link Around 165 million years ago on a coastal floodplain in what is now Morocco lived one of the most extreme dinosaurs on record, lavishly adorned with armor and spikes – some about three feet long – unlike that of any other known creature. Researchers on Wednesday described extensive fossilized remains discovered in the Atlas Mountains near …
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Tank-like physique, bristling with body armour and a collar of spikes the length of golf clubs, Spicomellus afer looks more like a Pokémon creation than a living creature. This bizarre dinosaur roamed the flood planes of what is now north Africa 165m years ago, palaeontologists have revealed. The fossil, the oldest known ankylosaur specimen, was unearthed near the central Moroccan …
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