Benin issued a series of wildlife-themed copper-nickel pieces in the early 1990s ostensibly as legal tender, but they were produced in limited quantities by European minting contractors and sold primarily through the philatelic and numismatic trade rather than circulated domestically. The CFA franc itself — the currency of the zone — was and remains controlled by the Banque Centrale des États de l'Afrique de l'Ouest, meaning individual member states have virtually no independent monetary authority over circulating coinage.
Acanthopholis was a mid-Cretaceous ankylosaur known only from fragmentary English material, which makes its appearance on a West African collector piece a curiously arbitrary choice.
Benin issued a series of wildlife-themed copper-nickel pieces in the early 1990s ostensibly as legal tender, but they were produced in limited quantities by European minting contractors and sold primarily through the philatelic and numismatic trade rather than circulated domestically. The CFA franc itself — the currency of the zone — was and remains controlled by the Banque Centrale des États de l'Afrique de l'Ouest, meaning individual member states have virtually no independent monetary authority over circulating coinage.
Acanthopholis was a mid-Cretaceous ankylosaur known only from fragmentary English material, which makes its appearance on a West African collector piece a curiously arbitrary choice.