The Earliest Armoured Ankylosaur: Spicomellus afer

During the Middle Jurassic, an unusual armoured dinosaur roamed the floodplains of what is now Morocco in North Africa. This dinosaur, Spicomellus afer, possessed an extraordinary body covered with elaborate armour. Its discovery represents the earliest known fossil record of ankylosaurs and pushes the evolutionary history of this group back by at least thirty million years. The find has dramatically reshaped palaeontologists' understanding of how ankylosaur body armour and tail weapons evolved, and it also encourages a reconsideration of the function of the complex structures seen on these dinosaurs.

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