‘Bizarre’ armored dinosaur, Spicomellus afer, with meter-long neck spikes rewrites tail weapon timeline

The world’s most unusual dinosaur is even stranger than first realized. 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 meter-long spikes sticking out from either side of its neck. The paper is titled “Extreme armour in the world’s oldest ankylosaur.”