Fossils of S. afer
© The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London
A newly-identified bizarre dinosaur fossil from Morocco has presented creationists with yet another thorny problem to ignore.
It is that of an ankylosaur from early in the evolutionary history of that group. Not only is its great age a problem for those who believe Earth was magicked into existence by a god with all living things fully formed and an environment perfectly tuned for life (i.e. human life — supposedly the god’s favourite), but at 165 million years old it comes from the vast span of Earth’s pre-“Creation Week” history — that 99.9975% of the planet’s history which creationists pretend never happened. This is, in fact, the oldest ankylosaur yet discovered.
Unlike later ankylosaurs, however, this one had long spikes firmly attached to its bones. These appear to have been lost as the group evolved, showing relatively rapid change. That in itself runs counter to the creationist dogma that evolution cannot proceed by loss of genetic information and must always involve increasing complexity for it to be “real” evolution. This claim, like so many creationist assertions, ignores abundant evidence — such as the reduction in genome size and anatomical complexity in many endoparasites.
Now they have yet another example to ignore while busily constructing their infantile strawman versions of evolution to attack.
The discovery by palaeontologists co-led by Professor Susannah Maidment of Natural History Museum, London, and the University of Birmingham, has just been reported in Nature and is explained in a news item from the University of Birmingham and an accompanying YouTube video:
Ankylosaurs: Evolution and Distribution. General Overview
Ankylosaurs were a diverse group of herbivorous, armoured dinosaurs belonging to the order Ornithischia. They lived from the Middle Jurassic (~165 million years ago) through to the end of the Cretaceous (66 million years ago), spanning more than 100 million years of Earth’s history. Their defining traits were bony dermal armour (osteoderms), low-slung bodies, and in some lineages, the famous bony tail club.
Evolutionary History
- Origins:
The oldest known ankylosaur fossils are now from the Middle Jurassic (like your Moroccan find). Before this, the earliest evidence was from the Late Jurassic (e.g. Gargoyleosaurus in North America).- Early Forms:
Early ankylosaurs had slender bodies, long limbs, and often bore spikes or plates fixed directly to their skeletons. These were gradually replaced in later groups by more flexible armour embedded in the skin.- Diversification:
By the Early Cretaceous, ankylosaurs had diversified into two main families:
- Nodosauridae: Lacked tail clubs, but many bore long shoulder spikes.
- Ankylosauridae: More heavily armoured, with broad skulls and often equipped with tail clubs.
- Loss of Complexity:
The fossil record shows reduction as well as elaboration — e.g., loss of spikes in later ankylosaurs, or fusion of armour into more uniform plating. This directly undermines creationist claims that evolution can only increase complexity.
Distribution
- Jurassic: Earliest ankylosaurs appear in Laurasia (North America, Europe, Asia, North Africa).
- Cretaceous: They achieved near-global distribution, spreading across North America, Asia, and Europe.
- Gondwana: Fewer remains are known, but finds in Australia, Antarctica, South America, and Africa show they were globally widespread.
- Late Cretaceous Dominance: Particularly diverse and abundant in Asia (notably Mongolia and China) and western North America, with iconic genera like Ankylosaurus, Euoplocephalus, and Saichania.
Extinction
Like all non-avian dinosaurs, ankylosaurs went extinct at the Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary (66 Ma). Their specialised herbivory and heavy armoured bodies may have made them less resilient to the ecological upheavals caused by the asteroid impact.
In short: Ankylosaurs originated in the Middle Jurassic, diversified into two major lineages, and spread worldwide. Their evolution demonstrates both gains and losses of traits, directly contradicting the creationist narrative that evolution must always produce “greater complexity.”
“Bizarre” armoured dinosaur, Spicomellus afer, had spikes sticking out from its neck, fossils show
Newly discovered fossils reveal that Spicomellus afer’s skeleton was covered in spikes, some fused to the animal’s skeleton, measuring as much as a metre long.
The world’s most unusual dinosaur is even stranger than first realised, as new research published in Nature reports that Spicomellus afer had a tail weapon more than 30 million years before any other ankylosaur, as well as a unique bony collar ringed with metre-long spikes sticking out from either side of its neck.
Spicomellus is the world’s oldest ankylosaur, having lived more than 165 million years ago in the Middle Jurassic near what is now the Moroccan town of Boulemane. It was the first ankylosaur to be found on the African continent.
New remains of Spicomellus found by a team of palaeontologists have helped to build upon the original description of the unusual animal. The initial description of the species was published in 2021 and was based on one rib bone. The team now know that the animal had bony spikes fused onto and projecting from all of its ribs, a feature not seen in any other vertebrate species living or extinct. It had long spikes, measuring 87 centimetres, which authors believe would have been even longer during the animal’s life, that emerged from a bony collar that sat around its neck.
To find such elaborate armour in an early ankylosaur changes our understanding of how these dinosaurs evolved. It shows just how significant Africa’s dinosaurs are, and how important it is to improve our understanding of them. Spicomellus had a diversity of plates and spikes extending from all over its body, including metre-long neck spikes, huge upwards-projecting spikes over the hips, and a whole range of long, blade-like spikes, pieces of armour made up of two long spikes, and plates down the shoulder. We’ve never seen anything like this in any animal before. It’s particularly strange as this is the oldest known ankylosaur, so we might expect that a later species might have inherited similar features, but they haven’t.
Professor Susannah Maidment, first author
Fossil Reptiles, Amphibians and Birds Section
Natural History Museum, London, UK. And School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UKSeeing and studying the Spicomellus fossils for the first time was spine-tingling. We just couldn’t believe how weird it was and how unlike any other dinosaur, or indeed any other animal we know of alive or extinct. It turns much of what we thought we knew about ankylosaurs and their evolution on its head and demonstrates just how much there still is to learn about dinosaurs.
Professor Richard Butler, co-lead author
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
Authors propose that this array of spikes would have been used for attracting mates and showing off to rivals. Interestingly, similar display armour has not yet been found in any other ankylosaur, with later species possessing armour that probably functioned more for defence.
One explanation for this is that as larger predatory dinosaurs evolved in the Cretaceous, as well as bigger carnivorous mammals, crocodiles and snakes, the rising risk of predation could have driven ankylosaur armour to become simpler and more defensive.
One feature of early ankylosaurs that may have survived, however, is their tail weaponry. While the end of Spicomellus’ tail hasn’t been found, the bones that do survive suggest that it had a club or a similar tail weapon.
Some of the tail vertebrae are fused together to form a structure known as a handle, which has only been found in ankylosaurs with a tail club. However, all these animals lived millions of years later in the Cretaceous.
Authors of the study believe that the combination of a tail weapon and an armoured shield that protected the hips suggest that many of the ankylosaurs’ key adaptations already existed by the time of Spicomellus.
The discovery reinforces the importance of the fossil record in solving evolutionary puzzles and deepening our understanding of the geographic distribution of dinosaurs. It also helps to spark public imagination in dinosaurs as we learn more about the baffling characteristics of species like Spicomellus.
This study is helping to drive forward Moroccan science. We’ve never seen dinosaurs like this before, and there’s still a lot more this region has to offer.
Professor Driss Ouarhache, co-author.
GERA Laboratory
Faculty of Sciences Dhar El Mahraz
Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fez, Morocco.
The Spicomellus afer remains that form the basis of this study were cleaned and prepared at the Department of Geology of the Dhar El Mahraz Faculty of Sciences in Fez, Morocco, using scientific equipment provided by the University of Birmingham’s Research England International Strategy and Partnership Fund. The fossils are now catalogued and stored on this site.
Publication:
Abstract
The armoured ankylosaurian dinosaurs are best known from Late Cretaceous Northern Hemisphere ecosystems, but their early evolution in the Early–Middle Jurassic is shrouded in mystery due to a poor fossil record1,2. Spicomellus afer was suggested to be the world’s oldest ankylosaur and the first from Africa, but was based on only a single partial rib from the Middle Jurassic of Morocco3. Here we describe a new, much more complete specimen that confirms the ankylosaurian affinities of Spicomellus, and demonstrates that it has uniquely elaborate dermal armour unlike that of any other vertebrate, extant or extinct. The presence of ‘handle’ vertebrae in the tail of Spicomellus indicates that it possessed a tail weapon, overturning current understanding of tail club evolution in ankylosaurs, as these structures were previously thought to have evolved only in the Early Cretaceous4. This ornate armour may have functioned for display as well as defence, and a later reduction to simpler armour with less extravagant osteoderms in Late Cretaceous taxa might indicate a shift towards a primarily defensive function, perhaps in response to increased predation pressures or a switch to combative courtship displays.
Maidment, S.C.R., Ouarhache, D., Ech-charay, K. et al.
Extreme armour in the world’s oldest ankylosaur.
Nature (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09453-6
© 2025 Springer Nature Ltd.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The significance of this fossil goes well beyond filling a gap in the fossil record of ankylosaurs. It shows the group was already diversifying in the Middle Jurassic, long before creationists claim the Earth even existed. That alone makes it a direct challenge to their dogma, because it pushes back the origin of a major lineage of dinosaurs into the deep past they deny.
Even more damaging for them is the evolutionary story the fossil tells. Here we see an early ankylosaur bearing prominent spikes that were later lost in its descendants. Far from showing a one-way march toward ever greater complexity, this illustrates a central truth of evolution: traits can be gained, modified, or discarded depending on changing environments and selective pressures. Complexity can decrease as well as increase, and sometimes losing a structure is as much an adaptation as gaining one.
Creationists are left with a stark choice: either accept that ankylosaurs — like countless other organisms — evolved over millions of years in ways that don’t fit their childish caricatures of “information gain,” or continue to turn a blind eye to inconvenient evidence. As with so many fossils before, this discovery doesn’t just add another piece to the evolutionary puzzle — it shows once again that creationism has no answers, only denial.
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