"Jaw-Droppingly Weird" Dinosaur from Morocco was Studded with Spikes

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 armour and spikes - some about three feet (one meter) long - unlike that of any other known creature.

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Researchers on Wednesday described extensive fossilised remains discovered in the Atlas Mountains near the Moroccan town of Boulemane of a Jurassic Period dinosaur named Spicomellus. Roughly 13 feet (four meters) long and weighing perhaps one to two tons, Spicomellus is the oldest-known member of a group of tank-like armoured dinosaurs called ankylosaurs, squat and slow-moving plant-eaters that walked on four legs.

"The armour of Spicomellus is jaw-droppingly weird, unlike that of any other dinosaur - or any other animal alive or dead - that we've ever discovered,” said vertebrate palaeontologist Richard Butler of the University of Birmingham in England, co-leader of the research published in the journal Nature.

Not only did it have a series of sharp, long spikes on each of its ribs - unknown elsewhere among animals - but it had spines the length of golf clubs sticking out in a collar around its neck," Butler added. The extravagant armour may have served dual roles - as defence against large meat-eating dinosaurs and as a display to attract mates.