“We simply could not believe how strange it was and how, unlike any other dinosaur, or in fact, any other animal we know, alive or extinct,” said Richard Butler, co-leader of the project and paleontologist at the University of Birmingham in England.
The opportunity to see and study the fossils of Spicomellus was “Hormigueo of the column,” said Butler.
It was not only those involved in the project who were excited.
“This is really one of the strangest and most crazy dinosaurs I have seen,” said Steve Brusatte, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who did not participate in the investigation.
“He has bone peaks that stand out from his entire body, as if it were a kind of porcupine of reptiles,” he said Thursday. “If you were a dinosaur that ate meat that lived in the Jurassic period, you would stay very far from this animal.”
Brusatte added: “It is a great example of how there are still so many new things to discover. Until these fossils were found, we had no inclination that an animal that this fantastic has lived.”
Maidment, co-leader of the study, said the discovery showed that much more research is needed in Africa, with countries like Morocco a non-exploited gold mine for dinosaurs investigation.
“It is very low sampling compared to the other continents,” said Maidment, of the National Museum of History of London.
Maidment said the Spicomellus project, which actually began in 2018, faced several obstacles along the way, including Covid-19 pandemic.
The United Kingdom team was ready to fly to fulfill its Moroccan counterparts for the project when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a closure, delaying their plans until 2022.
Despite these challenges, the research project has proven to be a great step forward for science in Morocco.
“This study is helping to promote Moroccan science. We have never seen dinosaurs like this before, and there is still much more than this region to offer,” said Driss Ouarhache, who directed the Moroccan team.
