Paleontologists Identify New Species of Glyptodont
Paleontologists have identified a new species of glyptodont, Glyptotherium deuterophractum, based on a fossilized skull held in the Natural History Museum of Denmark. The discovery provides new insights into the diversity of these giant, armored relatives of armadillos that lived in South America during the Pleistocene.
Why it matters
Reclassifying historical fossil specimens helps refine our understanding of evolutionary history and the biodiversity of ancient ecosystems.
An incomplete fossilized skull that has sat in the collections of the Natural History Museum of Denmark since the 19th century has turned out to represent a previously unrecognized species of glyptodont (genus Glyptotherium ) that once roamed South America.
Paleo-Indians hunting a glyptodont, a relative of the armadillo that lived during the Pleistocene epoch. By Heinrich Harder, 1920.
The newly named species, Glyptotherium deuterophractum , lived between 60,000 and 17,000 years ago in a swath of South America stretching from Brazil to Venezuela.
The animal was a type of glyptodont , the extinct clade of giant, heavily armored relatives of modern armadillos, some of which grew to the size of a small car.
“Among the mammals of the Xenarthra clade known from the Brazilian Pleistocene, giant sloths and glyptodonts stand out in the fossil record,” said Universidade Federal de Pernambuco paleontologist Édison Vicente Oliveira and colleagues.
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