Spicomellus

Spicomellus afer is the first, and currently only, ankylosaur to be discovered in Africa. In fact its species name afer actually means African in Latin. It’s also the oldest ankylosaur ever found.

Our scientists helped to name and describe this unique dinosaur.

The name Spicomellus comes from the Latin words ‘spicus’, meaning spiked, and ‘mellus’, which is the name of a spiky collar that in ancient times was put on dogs to protect them from wild animals.

The name refers to the way that a lot of this dinosaur’s spikes join directly to its bones – this hasn’t been seen in any other living or extinct animal. Normally, if an animal has spikes, they’re embedded in the skin.

Each Spicomellus spike would probably have been covered in keratin, the same substance that our hair and fingernails are made of. This would have made them even longer.

Since the species was named in 2021, scientists have found more Spicomellus fossils, including a bony collar with metre-long spikes emerging from it. So, it really is living up to its name.

Spicomellus was found in Morocco in rocks known as the El Mers III Formation. Today this area is high in the Middle Atlas Mountains, but during the Jurassic Period, when this dinosaur was alive, it would’ve been part of a vast network of wetlands.

These wetlands would have provided lots of vegetation for Spicomellus to eat.

We only know Spicomellus from a partial skeleton that’s missing skull and leg bones that might reveal more about its lifestyle.

To fill in the gaps and to reconstruct what Spicomellus might have looked like, scientists have compared its fossils to the skeletons of other ankylosaurs. Spicomellus was probably three to four metres long, which is around the same size as an average small car.

Spicomellus has a similar body shape to other ankylosaurs, with four legs supporting a bulky body and tail.

What sets it apart is that the upper side of its body would have been covered in spikes of varying sizes. Scientists think that these spikes were originally used for defence but were then adapted for use in displays to attract mates and compete with rivals.

It’s likely that it also had a spiked tail weapon. While this weapon hasn’t yet been discovered, Spicomellus does have a bony structure known as a handle, which has only been found in ankylosaurs that have tail weapons.

Scientists had thought that ankylosaur tail weapons only evolved in the Cretaceous Period, 145–66 million years ago. But Spicomellus was alive millions of years earlier, which suggests that the key features associated with ankylosaurs are much older than expected.