New dinosaur species is the punk rock version of an ankylosaur

Ankylosaurs, with their squat, armored bodies and bizarre, weaponized tails, are an iconic group of dinosaurs. While there were plenty of species present in the Cretaceous, they're thought to have origins that trace back to the Jurassic. It has been hard to say much about those origins, however, because the fossil evidence was so sparse. One of the earliest potential ankylosaur species, Spicomellus, was known from only a single partial rib; others are known only by jaw fragments or teeth. Now, however, we have a much better picture of what Spicomellus afer looks like thanks to a much larger collection of bones discovered in Morocco. It turns out that the heavy armor and rows of chunky spikes found on Cretaceous ankylosaurs were actually subdued compared to the massive rows of meter-long spikes and bony collars found on Spicomellus. It looks like what would happen if you combined the aesthetics of punk with the flamboyance of glam and made a dinosaur out of the results. A spiky find Cretaceous ankylosaurs share a number of common features. One is a short, broad body form that kept the herbivores close to the ground when on all four limbs. Another common feature: bony plates, formed from the skin, that provided the animal with the equivalent of body armor. Some of these, especially along the animal's ribs, thickened into short, blunt spikes that provided added protection. Finally, many species had tails that ended in club-like growths that attached to the vertebrae in the tail through features with the highly technical name of "handles." There's been some debate about the nature of all these eccentricities. One side of the argument suggests they were a protective response to the increasing number of large carnivores that evolved over the course of the Cretaceous. Others suggest that some of them were used in combat or displays that were essential for mating success. But there was general agreement that they probably evolved from simpler forms of basic protection that were likely present on the early species found in the Jurassic.