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Palaeontologists reported some remarkable dinosaur fossils this year, including a Velociraptor relative, a dome-headed pachycephalosaur and one of the most heavily armoured creatures that ever lived

By James Woodford

25 December 2025

Zavacephale rinpoche

Masaya Hattori

If there’s ever a creature you would not want to bump heads with, it is Zavacephale rinpoche. This dome-headed dinosaur found in Mongolia lived 108 million years ago, making it the oldest of its kind ever discovered. When palaeontologists first saw the fossil skull protruding from the ground, they described it as looking like a “cabochon jewel”. While other species in the group could reach 4 metres in length and up to 400 kilograms, this specimen was a mere teenager and would have been about a metre long, weighing about 6 kilograms.

Spicomellus afer

Matthew Dempsey

When scientists were trying to describe a 165-million-year-old dinosaur fossil found in Morocco, named *Spicomellus afer, *they were lost for words. The dinosaur, a kind of ankylosaur, may be one of the most heavily armoured creatures that ever lived. According to Susannah Maidment at the Natural History Museum in London, the creature was so bizarre that there weren’t enough hyperboles to describe it. In the end, the team settled on the word “baroque” to attempt to capture its unique look.

Duonychus tsogtbaatari

Masato Hattori

Duonychus tsogtbaatari, a 90-million-year-old fossil found in the Gobi desert, may be the closest thing the dinosaurs had to Edward Scissorhands. It was a bipedal, herbivorous animal that had only two fingers on each hand, which it may have used to grasp branches and pull them towards its mouth. But they were no ordinary fingers, as they were armed with two giant claws up to 30 centimetres long that belie its vegetarian diet.

Shri rapax

Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels

While fans of Jurassic Park may shiver at the sight of that movie’s velociraptors, those predators were probably nothing compared with the Velociraptor-like Shri rapax, found in the Gobi desert. It had hands and claws so fierce that its name was inspired by the word rapacious. At 2 metres in length, the dinosaur may have been one of the most dangerous creatures hunting in the sprawling sand dunes and intermittent lakes when it lived between 75 and 71 million years ago.

Baminornis zhenghensis

ZHAO Chuang

Is it a bird? Is it a dinosaur? A 150-million-year-old fossil from China, named Baminornis zhenghensis, had researchers baffled about where in the evolutionary tree it belonged. Ultimately, they concluded that the quail-sized creature may be the earliest known bird – although birds are also a kind of dinosaur, of course. The kicker leading to the decision was that it had a much shorter tail than *Archaeopteryx, *another fossil long considered to be an early relative of modern birds. The discovery shows that the short tails characteristic of modern birds evolved much earlier than previously thought.

Joaquinraptor casali

Andrew McAfee, Carnegie Museum of Natural History

No amount of dental floss would have helped a ferocious 66-million-year-old dinosaur discovered in Patagonia with a crocodile leg stuck in its jaw. Joaquinraptor casali, a new species of megaraptor, was armed with a thumb claw the size of a human forearm and it may have been one of the fiercest predators of the Cretaceous. While Tyrannosaurus rex was probably bigger, the new dinosaur had much stronger and more muscular arms. This specimen of J. casali would have been at least 19 years old when it died, about 7 metres long and weighed at least a tonne.

Dinosaur hunting in the Gobi desert, Mongolia

Embark on an exhilarating and one-of-a-kind expedition to uncover dinosaur remains in the vast wilderness of the Gobi desert, one of the world’s most famous palaeontological hotspots.

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