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Unlike crocodiles, turtles, lizards, dinosaurs, and fish that possess bony plates and scales, mammals have long since exchanged their ancestral armor for an insulating layer of hair. Armadillos, boasting a defensive and supple shell of overlapping bones, are thought to be the sole living anomaly.
Armadillos have long been considered to be the only living mammals that produce protective bony plates. But a new study unexpectedly shows that African spiny mice produce the same structures beneath the skin of their tails, which until now had gone largely undetected.
Researchers just discovered that the spiny mouse was concealing bony plates beneath the skin over its tail.
They are now spiky and armored.
This trait was thought to be limited in mammals only to armadillos.