These Spikes Grew Right Out of a Dinosaur's Ribs

A team of paleontologists announced this week the discovery of the oldest-known ankylosaur, a swaggering dinosaur famous for its armor plating and clubbed tail. But besides its superlative age of over 160 million years, the ankylosaur also had a bizarre morphology, as spines protruding from the animal&#;s back were fused to its ribs.

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Ankylosaurs were built for defense. Their thick skulls and body armor bring to mind a tank, and paleontologists recently suggested the animals may have even burrowed into the ground to protect themselves. But the newly named species, Spicomellus afer, stands out among these sturdy creatures, as the researchers describe in their new paper, published yesterday in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

&#;All ankylosaurs had spikes on their backs, but in our specimen they are fused to the ribs. This is a morphology not seen in any other ankylosaur, and indeed in any other vertebrate, living or extinct,&#; Susannah Maidment, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, told Gizmodo in an . The research was co-authored by scientists at the University of Fez in Morocco and the University of Zürich in Switzerland.

&#;The armour of ankylosaurs was most probably a defensive mechanism,&#; said Maidment, who is lead author of the recent paper. &#;It would have certainly been off-putting for predators to bite down on an animal covered in sharp spines like these!&#;

The entire fossil consists of a series of spikes, acquired by the National History Museum from a fossil dealer in . The smallest spike is a little over 2 inches tall and the tallest is nearly 4 inches tall, though it&#;s missing its tip. If you were a meat-eating theropod, it likely wouldn&#;t be your first choice for a meal.

The research team wasn&#;t sure at first what sort of dinosaur the fossil fragments belonged to. The fossil came out of the Middle Atlas mountain range of Morocco, where stegosauruses once roamed, so that was a possibility. It wasn&#;t until the team scrutinized the bone under a microscope and saw the unique structure of the osteoderms (the plate-like armor that protected the animals) that they realized they were looking at an ankylosaur, the first to ever be found in Africa. That also gives the species its name: Spicomellus&#;&#;collar of spikes&#;&#;afer&#;&#;of Africa.&#;

&#;This is a really weird-looking specimen, but ankylosaur osteoderms come in some pretty surprising shapes and sizes. Several species from Europe, like Hungarosaurus, have cone-shaped spikes like this,&#; Victoria Arbour, a paleontologist at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Canada who specializes in ankylosaurs, told Gizmodo in an .

&#;It&#;s really great to have another potential Middle Jurassic ankylosaur, since the fossil record of ankylosaurs from this time period is so scant, and I think this adds some interesting new evidence against the idea that stegosaurs were outcompeted by ankylosaurs at the end of the Jurassic,&#; added Arbour, who was not involved in the recent study.

Evidence of ankylosaurs is plentiful in the Cretaceous period, but S. afer dating from the Jurassic offers a tantalizing glimpse into the animals&#; more ancient roots. Maidment said that the research team hopes to return to the same rock that this fossil came from to see if more ankylosaurs from the time period can be found.

If so, it would help paleontologists understand if S. afer&#;s spike construction was the rule or the exception&#;whether it was a model for more ancient ankylosaurs or an aberrant member of the armor-plated dinosaur family tree.

More: Armored Dinos May Have Dug Trenches to Protect Themselves, Study Suggests

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Equipped with massive tails studded with spikes, ankylosaurs were heavily armored herbivores that could do real damage in a fight. Paleontologists once thought that these tank-like dinosaurs used their tail clubs solely to fight off predators, but a new study published Dec. 6 in the journal Biology Letters reveals that they also bashed each other in a show of dominance.

For the investigation, a team of North American paleontologists examined Zuul crurivastator (named after the fictional monster of the same name in the movie "Ghostbusters"), the most complete fossilized ankylosaur known whose remains are on display at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, Canada. Its species name, Crurivastator, Latin for "destroyer of shins," was inspired by the fearsome club at the end of its 10-foot-long (3 meter) tail.

Measuring 20 feet long (6 m) and weighing 5,500 pounds (2,500 kg), the 76 million-year-old specimen from the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago) contains several broken spikes along its flanks. Sections of fossilized skin on its flanks also show that Zuul's side wounds healed while the dinosaur was still alive. 

Related: Belly up: Why ankylosaurs are always found upside down

"The fossilized skin preservation over top of the damaged bony plates blew me away &#; seeing the healing reflected in the soft tissue is something really special about Zuul," David Evans, the study's co-author and Temerty Chair and curator of vertebrate paleontology at ROM, told Live Science in an .

He added, "We have all the bony armor plates and spikes still covered in fossilized skin, completely preserved over its entire body. Zuul gives us a remarkable picture of what these animals looked like when they were alive. Seeing where the damaged armor occurred relative to the undamaged normal armor meant we could study the pattern of pathology across the entire body."

An example of one of Zuul's tail spikes that was injured and later healed.

(Image credit: Royal Ontario Museum (ROM))

For years, scientists believed that ankylosaurs only used their "sledgehammer-like" tails to swat away predators, including one of the most infamous killers in the dinosaur kingdom: Tyrannosaurus rex. This is true, however the injuries inflicted on Zuul add another "piece to the puzzle" and serve as an example of sexual selection similar to antlers on deer or horns on antelopes, according to a statement.

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"Biological structures like this often served a number of different functions, and survival is key," Evans said. "We grew up thinking that the iconic tail clubs of these armored dinosaurs evolved to fend off predators, namely the tyrannosaurs, with the assumption that these were sluggish animals that lived their adult lives in relative solitude. Our new model of combat-driven tail club evolution not only overturns this anti-predator dogma, but also paints ankylosaurs as more socially complex animals, battling with other members of their species for dominance over territory or to impress mates &#; as suggested for other plant eating dinosaurs."

He added, "This idea of jousting ankylosaurs transforms them from the dinosaurian battle tanks to the dinosaurian knights in shining armor." 

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