Dr Susie Maidment, a Palaeontologist discovered a fabulous new fossil in her possession. All she has is a section of rib with prongs attached. But even from just this, the palaeontologist can tell it’s a novel species of armoured dinosaur and the oldest ankylosaur ever found.
She said the dinosaurs came out from Morocco, where these creatures have never been unearthed before.
That’s exciting enough but there’s also something very strange about this ancient specimen.
The spikes are fused directly to the bone, and this is a big puzzle, says Dr Maidment, who’s affiliated to London’s Natural History Museum (NHM).
Ordinarily, you would expect rib bones to be covered by muscle, and then by skin, and for the armour – made of a protein called keratin, like your fingernails – to be sitting on top of that.
But for the spikes to be connected straight through to the bone is just odd. For one thing, you’d think this would restrict the extension of the muscles and make it difficult for the animal to move.
“Honestly, it’s bizarre,” Dr Maidment told BBC News.
“We don’t see this in any other extant (still living) or extinct vertebrate anywhere. It’s a totally unprecedented morphology in the history of life on Earth.”
Dr Maidment’s team were so taken aback by the fossil, they wondered for a while whether it might actually be a fake, or not an ankylosaur at all; perhaps it was some monster fish never previously identified. But with detailed scanning and further investigations, it’s been possible to rule out both alternatives.
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