Another day, another dinosaur. At least, that must be how it feels to creationists trying to cling to demonstrably false beliefs by ignoring the evidence and pretending each new discovery is either a mistake, a fraud, or a sinister attempt by scientists to undermine their faith.
This time the problem comes from Teruel, Spain, where palaeontologists from the Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis have described an exceptionally well-preserved partial skull of a stegosaurian dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Villar del Arzobispo Formation, dating to about 150 million years ago. Their results, published in May 2025 in the Pensoft journal Vertebrate Zoology, identify the fossil as belonging to Dacentrurus armatus, and as the most complete stegosaurian skull yet found in Europe.
That matters because stegosaurian skulls are notoriously rare. Their bones were fragile, and the animals’ skulls were small compared with their heavily built bodies, so cranial material is much less commonly preserved than vertebrae, limb bones, plates or tail spikes. A skull as complete as this one is therefore not just another fossil for a museum drawer, but a valuable piece of anatomical evidence for understanding how these plated, quadrupedal herbivores evolved.
Using this specimen, the researchers were able to refine the known anatomy of Dacentrurus armatus and reassess the evolutionary relationships of stegosaurs more generally. Their analysis supports the division of Stegosauria into two major clades, Huayangosauridae and Stegosauridae, and they formalise a further grouping, Neostegosauria, to include later-diverging stegosaurids. In other words, one skull from Spain helps clarify not only a single European dinosaur species, but the wider evolutionary history and geographical spread of the iconic plated dinosaurs.
If nothing else, work such as this illustrates how science treats a new discovery: not as a threat to be denied, explained away or forced into conformity with dogma, but as additional evidence to be tested against existing knowledge. Where necessary, classifications are revised, hypotheses are adjusted, and understanding moves a little closer to reality.
Creationism, by contrast, starts with the conclusion and then tries to make the evidence fit. Science starts with the evidence and changes the conclusion when the evidence demands it. That is why a 150-million-year-old stegosaur skull from Spain is a contribution to human knowledge, not a theological inconvenience to be waved away.
What Were The Stegosaurian Dinosaurs? Stegosaurians were a group of armoured, plant-eating, four-legged dinosaurs best known for the rows of bony plates and spines that ran along the neck, back and tail. The most familiar member of the group is Stegosaurus, from the Late Jurassic of North America, but stegosaurians were a wider and more varied group, known from North America, Europe, Africa and Asia. They belonged to the ornithischian dinosaurs, within the armoured dinosaur group Thyreophora, the same broad branch that later included the heavily armoured ankylosaurs. [1]The publication in Vertebrate Zoology was accompanied by A post in Pensoft.blog
Their basic body plan was distinctive: a small head, relatively weak-looking jaws, a bulky body, strong limbs, a long tail, and a line of plates, spikes or both along the upper surface of the body. In Stegosaurus, the forelimbs were shorter than the hindlimbs, giving the animal its characteristic arched profile, while its broad feet supported a heavy, slow-moving herbivore. The Natural History Museum describes Stegosaurus as a large plant-eater, up to about 9 metres long, living around 152–145 million years ago. [1]
The plates are one of the most debated features of stegosaurs. Early interpretations treated them as armour, but that explanation is now less favoured because the plates were thin and relatively fragile. Modern interpretations usually suggest a role in display, species recognition, sexual signalling, intimidation, heat regulation, or some combination of these. The presence of grooves for blood vessels in some plates has supported the idea that they may have helped dump or absorb heat, although display remains a strong possibility. [2]
The tail spikes, by contrast, were much more obviously defensive. In Stegosaurus, these spikes formed the famous “thagomizer” at the end of the tail, and would have been a formidable weapon against predators such as Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus. A heavy tail swung sideways, armed with long bony spikes, would have made even a large theropod think twice before attacking from behind. [1]
Despite their size, stegosaurs had small skulls and relatively small teeth. This once raised the question of how such large animals processed enough food, but studies of skull mechanics suggest that at least some stegosaurs had efficient jaws and could feed effectively on plants such as ferns, cycads and other Jurassic vegetation. The old idea that Stegosaurus had a “second brain” in its hips is also a myth; the enlarged space in the sacral region was not a brain, but probably related to storage of energy-rich substances such as glycogen. [2]
Stegosaur fossils are often incomplete, and skulls are especially rare because the skull bones were fragile and much less likely to survive fossilisation than vertebrae, limb bones, plates or spikes. That is why the new skull from Teruel is important. It provides unusually detailed information about the head of Dacentrurus armatus, a European stegosaur, and helps palaeontologists reassess how different stegosaurian groups were related to one another. [3]
Recent work supports the view that Stegosauria can be divided into two major clades, Huayangosauridae and Stegosauridae, with a newly formalised group, Neostegosauria, including several later-diverging, medium- to large-bodied stegosaurs from Europe, Africa, North America and Asia. That is a good example of how palaeontology works: a rare fossil does not merely add another name to a list; it can change the branching pattern of an entire evolutionary tree. [4]
Europe’s most complete stegosaurian skull unearthed in Teruel, Spain
A new study by palaeontologists from the Fundación Dinópolis, published in the journal Vertebrate Zoology, rewrites the evolutionary history of this dino group.
Palaeontologists from the Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis have published new research in the prestigious scientific journal Vertebrate Zoology published by Senckenberg. The article describes a partial stegosaurian skull discovered in the municipality of Riodeva (Teruel, Spain) and proposes a new hypothesis about the evolutionary history of plated dinosaurs.
Close-up photograph of the Dacentrurus armatus skull found in Riodeva (Teruel, Spain).
Stegosaurs were dinosaurs mainly characterized by being plant-eaters, moving on all fours, and displaying two rows of plates and/or spines from the neck to the end of the tail. The specimen studied was recovered during the palaeontological excavations led by the Fundación Dinópolis at the “Están de Colón” fossil site, located in sediments of the Villar del Arzobispo Formation, dating to the Late Jurassic epoch (around 150 million years ago). It is the best-preserved stegosaurian skull ever found in Europe and has been identified as belonging to the species Dacentrurus armatus.
The detailed study of this exceptional fossil has allowed us to reveal previously unknown aspects of the anatomy of Dacentrurus armatus, the quintessential European stegosaur, which in 2025 marks 150 years since its first description. Dinosaurian skulls are rarely preserved due to the extreme fragility of their bones. This discovery is key to understanding how stegosaurian skulls evolved. Furthermore, alongside the anatomical study, we have also proposed a new hypothesis that redefines the evolutionary relationships of stegosaurs worldwide. As a result of this work, we have formalized the definition of a new group called Neostegosauria.
Sergio Sánchez Fenollosa, co-author
Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis
Museo Aragonés de Paleontología
Teruel, Spain.
Head of a Dacentrurus armatus sculpture on display at Dinópolis (Teruel, Spain).
Illustration of Dacentrurus armatus.Credit: Adrián Blázquez / Fundación Dinópolis.
According to the researchers, this new group includes medium to large-sized stegosaurian species that at least lived in what is now Africa and Europe during the Middle and Late Jurassic, in North America during the Late Jurassic, and in Asia during the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous.
This dual achievement–both the study of an exceptional fossil and the proposal of a new evolutionary hypothesis–positions this research as a global reference in stegosaurian studies. This fossil site from Riodeva continues to be a subject of research and still holds numerous relevant fossils, including more postcranial elements from the same adult specimen and, notably, juvenile individuals, a particularly rare combination in this type of dinosaurs. These discoveries continue to exponentially increase the palaeontological heritage of the province of Teruel, making it one of the iconic regions for understanding the evolution of life on Earth.
Alberto Cobos, co-author.
Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis
Museo Aragonés de Paleontología
Teruel, Spain.
3D rendering of a fossilized piece of dinosaur skull.
Cranial reconstruction of a stegosaur, showing the studied fossil in its anatomical position.
Set of images of the most complete stegosaurian skull found in Europe, belonging to Dacentrurus armatus and recovered from Riodeva (Teruel, Spain).
Publication:Sánchez-Fenollosa S, Cobos A (2025)
New insights into the phylogeny and skull evolution of stegosaurian dinosaurs: An extraordinary cranium from the European Late Jurassic (Dinosauria: Stegosauria). Vertebrate Zoology 75: 165-189. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.75.e146618
So here again we have a fossil that is not merely “another dinosaur”, but another piece of evidence in a much larger and increasingly detailed evolutionary picture. A fragile skull, preserved in Late Jurassic rocks in Spain, has helped palaeontologists refine the anatomy of Dacentrurus armatus, clarify relationships within Stegosauria, and improve our understanding of how these iconic plated dinosaurs evolved and spread.
None of that was predicted by creationism. Nor could it have been. Creationism has no explanatory framework for why related animals should appear in a branching pattern through time and geography, why their anatomy should show both shared inheritance and local variation, or why new discoveries should fit into an evolutionary sequence rather than appear as disconnected acts of magical manufacture.
Science, by contrast, not only expects new evidence to modify and improve existing classifications; it depends on it. The discovery of a rare stegosaur skull in Teruel did not cause palaeontologists to abandon evolutionary theory. It gave them more data with which to test, refine and strengthen their understanding of stegosaur evolution. That is how a real evidence-based discipline works.
And that is precisely the problem for creationists. Every new fossil, every improved analysis, and every revised evolutionary tree adds yet more detail to a history of life measured in tens and hundreds of millions of years — a history that unfolded long before any human culture invented its creation myths, and long before anyone imagined that the entire universe had been created in a few days for the benefit of one species of ape.
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