The Daily Mail reported that Argentine farmer Juan de Dios Sota dug up huge fossils in his yard, derived from a very rare animal, the armadillo (qiú yú). The fossils belong to four corpses, about 20,000 years old.
Armadillos, Xiaobian is still the first time to know about this animal, I checked it, found that they live in the Americas, not in our country.
Modern armadillos, smaller in size
The armadillo, also known as the eagle toothed beast, is a mammal with scales on its body, with hairs between the scales, no scales on the abdomen, only hair, and a lot of tiny teeth in the mouth, and it lives by eating termites and some insects. There are 30 species of armadillos that have been discovered, of which 9 are extinct and 21 are extant, all living in the southern United States and Central and South America, and are now endangered.
Armadillo fossils found at Juan's house
Juan's family was on the dry riverbed of the Wallemanka River, and the Quaternary Institute of Archaeology and Paleontology (INCUAPA) explained that because of the drought, the riverbed dried up, allowing ancient specimens that were once submerged in the river to be reproduced.
"When we went there, we thought we would find two glyptodonts, but then we found two more!" Archaeologist Pablo Messino was excited. "This is the first time there have been four such animals in the same place, and most of them are facing the same direction, as if they were walking toward something."
Pablo wondered if the four represented a male and female parent, leading their children, and whether it would reveal the ancient state of armadillo settlement.
INCUAPA researchers excavate fossils
Paleontologist Ricardo Bonini hopes to resolve their ancient family structure by studying specimens that look like Beetle sedans. He wondered if the animals had experienced hermaphrodites, and if so, the size of an individual armadillo depended on its sex.
"It's very rare for several armadillos to die in the same situation at the same time," he said. This will give us a lot of information about these mysterious animals, and we will also be able to test several hypotheses from recent years. ”
According to the INCUAPA study, the ancient giant armadillo roamed South America for 30 million years and became extinct about 10,000 years ago. Some scientists believe that early humans used the hard shells of ancient armadillos as protective weapons, overcaping them and causing them to become extinct.
INCUAPA researchers looked for the cause of their deaths
Experts are now desperate to know the age and cause of death of these armadillos, as well as to find out whether they have intersex forms.
As part of the superorder mammals, these massive armadillo ancestors were staunch herbivores. They naturally evolved an armor-like appearance to protect themselves from other animals, such as the terror bird, an ancient, flightless carnivorous bird of the time. Some ancient armadillos have shells up to 5 feet long and up to 2 inches thick.
In the area, in 2015, another Argentine farmer spotted a three-foot-long ancient armadillo.
Their armor is made up of more than 1,000 one-inch-thick bone plates, which are called bone skins.
Xiaobian thinks that armadillos are still quite cute, and pangolins are particularly similar, they are all covered with lin armor, they all burrow, they all feed on termites and ants, and they are facing extinction. They are defensive players who survive on the basis of their armor from being destroyed by animals until they meet humans.
Seeing that 10,000 years ago, when the ancient armadillo may have gone extinct due to over-catching by humans at that time, and then think about today's pangolins, Xiaobian is silent.
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The photo of the article is from the Daily Mail.