A farmer made a surprising discovery in Argentina when he stumbled upon the fossil remains of four huge Glyptodon individuals in the Vallimanca stream channel while transporting cattle.
The Pampa Quaternary Archaeological and Paleontological Research Institute (Incuapa-Conicet) describes the discovery of specimens from the earth due to a great drought, which revealed the upper part of a shell.
Farmer Juan de Dios Sota was taking his cows to graze when he saw an unusual bump on the ground and thought it was the carcass of a cow. Once paleontologists arrived in the area, they recovered the fossil remains and examined the four glyptodonts that apparently died together .
Glypodons roamed South America for more than 20 million years, and it is believed that they became extinct at the hands of early man. They were herbivorous animals and their anatomy was adapted to serve as protection, like turtles, hence their huge and hard shell.
Despite being the size of a car, experts believe they were attacked by a group known as the terror birds , foorracids, a family of flightless carnivorous birds that inhabited most of the Cenozoic.
