Giant armadillo relative discovered in Chile

This video says about itself:

Video that show the giant prehistoric mammals fauna that lived thousands years ago (extinguished in present time) where today is located Daireaux, Argentina and whose fossils remains recently were found: Glyptodons (Doedicurus), Toxodons, Macrauchenias, Saber Tooth Cats (Smilodon), Megatherium, Bears and Elephants.

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News:

Giant Armadillo Relative Found

Dec. 12, 2007 — Battling thin air, water shortages and freezing cold temperatures, archaeologists recently unearthed an ancient armored relative of modern armadillos that looked like a Volkswagen Beetle and later evolved into species that were as big as the iconic car.

The newly found mammal, now extinct, weighed in at 200 pounds and once lumbered around northern Chile, where it was found in the Andes at one of the world’s highest elevation fossil sites.

“This new 18 million-year-old species is so fascinating because it is one of the earliest and most primitive members of its family — the armored-shelled glyptodonts — suggesting that the mid-latitude Andean regions were a center of origin of early diversification for a major group of South American mammals,” co-leader of the project, John Flynn, told Discovery News.

Flynn, dean of the Richard Gilder Graduate School and chairman & Frick curator in the Division of Paleontology at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, along with co-leader Darin Croft and colleagues, excavated the glyptodont, which they named Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis.

See also here. And here. And here. And here.

Glyptodont Tails Good For Smashing: here.

Doedicurus: here.

Macrauchenia patachonica and Toxodon platensis were two mammals exhibiting some mosaic features which made them difficult to place in the tree of life. Going all the way back to Darwin, scientists couldn’t figure out whether they were related to horses, elephants or belonged to altogether new groups. South American mammals from the Pleistocene were just weird: here.

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