Discovering mysterious Middle Jurassic dinosaurs in Morocco

High in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains an extraordinary cache of dinosaur fossils is opening a window into a little-known period in our planet’s history.

The Middle Jurassic is a key moment in the evolution of the dinosaurs, seeing them evolve from small, two-legged animals into a huge diversity of forms. However, as much of the world was underwater at the time, fossils from these land-based animals are extremely rare.

Rocks of the right age are only found in small outcrops dotted across the world in countries such as the UK, China and Madagascar. Recently, a new site has been revealed near the Moroccan town of Boulemane where our palaeontologists have helped to describe two extraordinary dinosaurs.

In 2023, our scientists returned to the site, along with colleagues from across the world, to dig deeper into Morocco’s Middle Jurassic. Our Senior Researcher Professor Susannah Maidment, who led the expedition, says that the region is incredibly rich in fossils from that time, including dinosaurs that are unlike any others on Earth.

“While Morocco is incredibly famous for its palaeontology, it’s mostly known for more recent dinosaurs like Spinosaurus,” Susannah explains. “Its Middle Jurassic hasn’t been investigated before, and we’re already finding that its dinosaurs from this time are very unusual.”

“By studying this region, we’re putting northern Morocco and the Atlas Mountains on the palaeontology map. In the future, I’m hoping this will be another amazing site in the country that scientists and tourists will want to visit.”

Dinosaur detectives

Hints of the site’s existence first came several years ago, when we acquired unusual stegosaur bones from a Cambridge fossil dealer, which were later described as Adratiklit.

“The bones were labelled as being from the Middle Jurassic of Boulemane, which I was a bit sceptical of,” Susannah recalls. “Stegosaurs are best known from later in the Jurassic, so a Middle Jurassic date would make this a very early representative of the group.”

“But when I started to look up the geology of the area, I realised that the dating seemed to fit, and that this could be a really important stegosaur.”

As isolated bones, the fossils had lost a lot of the contextual information that a researcher would normally find when they dig them up from a site – information about its environment, how it was preserved and how its bones fitted together.

To confirm this really was a Middle Jurassic stegosaur, finding where the bones originally came from was vital. There were no vertebrate palaeontologists in Morocco at the time, so Susannah began tracing their journey back from the UK to their dig site.

“I really wanted to find the place where the specimen had been dug up, but it was a bit of a long shot,” Susannah admits. “However, with the help of a colleague, we effectively worked our way back along the commercial supply chain to the man who dug it out of the ground. He allowed me to study the geology of the local area.”

Helping Susannah in her quest was Professor Driss Ouarhache, a Moroccan scientist from the Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah (USMBA) who specialises in the geology of the region.

“This site is one of the most important fossil sites in Morocco, and may even be the most important,” Driss says. “It is rich in fossils of many different dinosaurs, and you can find fossils on the ground almost everywhere without having to dig.”

Following Susannah’s first visit to the site, it was clear that it was something special. It became even more interesting after we acquired another fossil from the same site.

It was a rib bone with spikes fused to it – a condition unknown in any other animal, living or dead. While Susannah had thought that it might also be from Adratiklit at first, research revealed it was actually from an unknown ankylosaur, later named Spicomellus.

Spicomellus is the oldest known ankylosaur, and a very strange one at that, so Susannah put together a team to find out more about this dinosaur. After the first attempt was called off due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Susannah and her fellow scientists finally made it out to Boulemane in April 2023.

Moving mountains

Perched more than 2,000 metres up on the side of a mountain, the terrain surrounding the dig site doesn’t give up its secrets easily. Much of the area is covered in a soft mudstone, the remnant of ancient wetlands that once covered the landscape, meaning the ground is crumbly and prone to slip.

The site itself lies in a high-sided channel, which funnels flash floods and landslips through it. The night before the team arrived, some exposed fossils were buried following heavy rain and became too deep to be recovered.

The team not only had to be ready to leave at the first sign of rain, they also had to be careful because the sides of the ridges were at risk of collapse. Their first job, therefore, was to make the site as safe as possible before the excavations could properly begin.

“After checking the area for any loose fossils, we shift all the big rubble out the way to produce a platform from where we can dig down,” says Dr Simon Wills, our Scientific Associate.

“We only had a week on this expedition, and it takes a while to get down to the fossil level.”

Due to the lack of time, it was vital to identify the most promising spots to dig early on. Bone can be distinguished from surrounding rock by its porous texture, but even experts can have difficulties doing so in the field. In one instance, an initially promising object turned out to be a bone-shaped rock!

Developing Moroccan palaeontology

Such first-hand experience was important for the younger palaeontologists on the dig, such as Dr Kawtar Ech-charay. Kawtar is part of a new generation of Moroccan palaeontologists and was participating in one of their first digs.

“I chose to become a palaeontologist because I’m passionate about my country’s geological history,” Kawtar says. “But before I started, I wasn’t even aware that Morocco had a lot of dinosaurs.”

“This country is rich in geological heritage, but it’s not been well studied to date. It’s hard to get people into the field because there aren’t the jobs, so I’m hoping that by studying and raising awareness of this site, we can start to provide those opportunities to study our geological history.”

International collaborations such as these are an increasingly important part of modern palaeontology, as researchers move away from ‘parachute science’ – where scientists from elsewhere come in to do the fieldwork – towards local collaborations.

The University of Birmingham’s Professor Richard Butler, who’s worked with Susannah for many years, says, “I couldn’t imagine working in a country without local collaborators. It’s hard to understand not doing so from both an ethical and logistical standpoint.”

“In Morocco, we’ve been working with local collaborators to collect fossils together, as well as working on funding applications to support the early career scientists working here. We’re also helping to develop their careers with training, some of which we’re providing right now out here in the field.”

Keeping track of dinosaur fossils

On one side of the channel, the team identified a promising seam of Middle Jurassic rocks. Over the next few days, the scientists went from pickaxes to trowels to knives and eventually to brushes as they dug down, revealing some of Spicomellus’ characteristic ribs as well as other bones they didn’t yet recognise.

The locations of the fossils were carefully noted by Dr Luke Meade, who was trained by Richard at the University of Birmingham.

“It’s important to understand how the fossils are lying in the ground while we’re taking them out,” Luke explains. “The direction the bones are pointing or the way they’re spread out, can give us more information about how they were preserved and what was happening in an environment.”

“It also allows us to say if the bones are associated with each other. In this case, we’re very confident all the Spicomellus remains come from the same individual.”

Once they’d removed the bones, the team quickly covered them in plaster jackets. They also made sure the contents were documented and numbered so that when the jackets were re-opened they’d know exactly where in the site the fossils were from.

The fossils were then loaded into the team’s jeeps for the next stage of their 165-million-year journey and driven to USMBA.

What was found on the dig?

After arriving at Driss’s lab, the team laid out their fossil finds together for the first time. It was only then that they appreciated the extraordinary diversity of their discoveries, from new bones of Spicomellus to the fossils of stegosaurs, sauropods and much more.

“When we walked in the door at Driss’s lab and saw all the incredible Spicomellus material laid out, I think everybody was gobsmacked,” remembers Susannah.

“I just kept picking things up and I didn’t know what they were. It’s just an incredible feeling to know that you have this discovery that no human has ever seen before, which has the potential to fundamentally change our understanding of the diversity of the armoured dinosaurs.”

Studying them, however, had to wait. First, the fossils needed to be prepared – cleaned, stabilised and extracted from the rock surrounding them. It’s a time-consuming and complex procedure that the lab in Morocco didn’t have the facilities for in 2023.

Instead, the team were able to get funding to send Kawtar and fellow Moroccan PhD student Ahmed Oussou to Egypt to be trained in fossil preparation and to buy the equipment for a new preparation lab at USMBA.

With help from professional preparator Alison Park from Emanya Preparation and Conservation, a preparation company that specialises in vertebrate fossils, the team was able to reconstruct Spicomellus’s appearance for a 2025 paper.

A Moroccan museum?

All the fossils found in Boulemane by the team now form part of USMBA’s fossil collection and are intended for public display in the future. It’s hoped these fossils will be a catalyst to inspire more Moroccans to become palaeontologists and to increase opportunities for them.

“At the moment, vertebrate palaeontology isn’t well developed in this country,” Driss says. “But given recent discoveries and growing interest from the international community, it’s important that Moroccans take the initiative to study their own heritage.”

“Eventually, we’d like to open a museum and a fossil laboratory to inspire future generations. One of the ideas is to exhibit these discoveries but also leave some in a facility at the site so that the public can see them in situ.”

As international attention is drawn to the region, it’s hoped investment will follow. At the moment, a large part of the local economy is driven by the fossil trade, with many people depending on selling fossils to survive.

By creating new economic opportunities through scientific study and tourism, it’s hoped that fossils that would once have been sold can be made available to researchers. One plan is to have the area declared a geopark by UNESCO to recognise its “internationally significant geology”.

“There are only two geoparks in Africa at present, but I hope this will become the third,” Kawtar says. “It would be terrific and help to drive further investment in transport to make the region easier to access. This would help everyone who lives here and hopefully protect the fossils as well.”

In the meantime, there’s still a lot more fossils collected from Boulemane that are still to be studied. The team are expecting even more discoveries to come out of USMBA’s collection over the next few years and are already planning a return trip.

“We’ve got a lot of research planned with the team out in Morocco,” Susannah says. “It’s all helping to build capacity for palaeontology in the region and give Kawtar and Ahmed the skills that will hopefully secure them jobs.”

“Eventually, I’m hoping they’ll be running their own research groups and taking the lead on investigating the extraordinary geological history of their country.”