Farmer Finds 20,000-Year-Old Car-Sized Armadillos While Herding His Cattle
INCUAPAThe farmer was shocked to find a family of ancient armadillos on his property.
Juan de Dios Sota was moving his cattle from one place to the next when he made a shocking historical discovery. The Argentinian farmer unwittingly unearthed the 20,000-year-old remains of four giant armadillos. Known as Glyptodon, the four specimens had been stuck in the dried riverbed of Vallimanca for millennia.
While droughts are usually disastrous for farmers like Dios Sota, he would’ve never stumbled upon these prehistoric animals were it not for the lack of rain. As it turned out, they had been submerged for thousands of years — only to emerge during a particularly dry season in Dios Sota’s stomping grounds.
“It is the first time there have been four animals like this in the same site,” said archaeologist Pablo Messino, upon the announcement of the discovery in February. “Most of them were facing the same direction like they were walking towards something.”
The research team immediately wondered whether this group represented a male and female parent that had been leading their two youngsters when their lives came to an end. This was particularly intriguing to on-site paleontologist Ricardo Bonini — who hoped to learn about the creature’s family structure.
“These kinds of cases, in which several individuals together who died in the same circumstance, are really exceptional and undoubtedly will give us a lot of information about these enigmatic animals and will allow us to test several hypotheses that we have been driving in recent years,” he said.
Perhaps the most remarkable part of this historical discovery was the sheer size of the animals — which is comparable to a Volkswagen Beetle. This 11-foot-long behemoth could weigh more than 4,000 pounds.
INCUAPAExperts are now eager to assess how and when these animals died.
This species shuffled around the South American landscape for 30 million years before going extinct around 10,000 years ago. Some experts are adamant that early humans contributed to this by using their shells for shelter.
Whatever the cause of their demise, they remain fascinating to today and this historical news from 2020 yielded invaluable insights into Earth’s prehistoric past.
