The glyptodon is one of the stars of paleontology. Extinct 10,000 years ago in South America, it was, according to its fossils, a shocking and terrifying creature: endowed with an armed tail similar to a baton, it was covered by a hard bony shell and was the size of a utility vehicle . The first vestiges were discovered by Charles Darwin himself in the 1830s, and since then he has fueled the imagination of amateurs and experts, who related him, given his appearance, to armadillos. But they did not know where exactly to place this American monster on the tree of life.
Now there are almost no doubts: the glyptodon would belong to a subfamily of giant armadillos, according to a study published in the journal Current Biology . This conclusion is the result of the latest genetic analysis techniques: the researchers managed to extract DNA from a 12,000-year-old Doedicurus (one of the largest glyptodonts that existed), whose fossils are kept in a museum in Buenos Aires.
They then compared it to DNA from other placental mammals of the Xenarthra group (which includes sloths, anteaters, and armadillos), and made a virtual reconstruction of the extinct animal's genome. Thus not only did they determine the lineage of the glyptodon, a branch of the evolution of the armadillo, but they have also found a possible common ancestor of the South American monster and its modern relative : a small mammal of about six kilos. The glyptodon weighed two tons at its peak, in the Pleistocene.
