Scientists discover fossil of armored Spicomellus in Morocco
“We just couldn’t believe how weird and how much other dinosaur, or even any other animal we know, living or off,” said Richard Butler, project co-chief and paleontologist at the University of Birmingham in England.
The possibility of seeing and studying the spicomellus fossils was “the spine,” said Butler.
It was not only those involved in the project that were enthusiastic.
“It is really one of the strangest and most eccentric dinosaurs I have ever seen,” said Steve Brusatte, vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in research.
“He has bone spikes that go beyond his whole body, as if it was a kind of reptilian porcop-spic,” he said on Thursday. “If you were a dinosaur eater of meat living at the time of the Jurassic, you would stay far from this animal.”
Brusatte added: “This is an excellent example of how there are still so many new things to discover. Until these fossils were found, we had no inclination that this fantastic animal has ever experienced.”
Maidment, the co-leader of the study, said that the discovery has shown that much more research must be carried out in Africa, countries like Morocco an unexploited gold mine for research on dinosaurs.
“It is extremely subspeared with other continents,” said Maidment, from the National History Museum in London.
Maidment said that the Spicomellus project, which started in 2018, has faced several obstacles along the way, including the Pandemic COVID-19.
The British team was to fly away to meet its Moroccan counterparts for the project when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a locking, finally delaying their plans until 2022.
Despite these challenges, the research project turned out to be a major step for science in Morocco.
“This study helps to advance Moroccan science. We have never seen dinosaurs like that before, and there is still much more than this region has to offer,” said Driss Ouarhache, who managed the Moroccan team.
