He thought the extinct animal, later dubbed a
glyptodont, must have looked like a supersized armadillo.
Late Pleistocene (Rancholabrean)
glyptodont and pampathere (Xenarthra, Cingulata) from Sonora, Mexico.
Strangest of all, perhaps, was the
glyptodont: an enormous herbivore with an armored shell, like an armadillo grown to the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.
Glyptodont (giant armadillo) THESE shell-shockers were the size of a VWBeetle and looked very much like our modern day armadillos.
Crocodylus acutus (American crocodile), Pampatherium (extinct pampathere, or giant armadillo), Glyptotherium (extinct
glyptodont) and a capybara (Hydrochoerinae) at Terapa are unique in interior northern Sonora (Mead et al., 2006, 2007).
The complete fossil skeleton of a
Glyptodont shows how this car-sized armadillo relative was covered with a thick, bony shell (or carapace) to protect itself from large predators.
So far, the prints of 25 mammal and bird species have been identified, including the only known footprint of a
glyptodont, a large armadillo-like mammal.
In Mexico, the published
glyptodont record includes G.
Glyptodont (giant armadillo) THESE shell-shockers were the size of a VW Beetle and looked very much like our modern day armadillos.
The sweet spot of a biological hammer: the centre of percussion of
glyptodont (Mammalia: Xenarthra) tail clubs.
They would include five species of deer or moose, two llamas, a camel, three horses, four ground-sloths ranging from 400 pounds to 3 tons, a 600-pound armadillo, a 2,000-pound turtle-like
glyptodont, two ox-like species, a 5-ton mastodon, a 6-ton woolly mammoth, and a 9-ton Columbian mammoth.