Two children, one 9 years old and the other 11 years old, while playing on San Carlos beach in Mar del Plata (Argentina), discovered the remains of a glyptodon, a giant armadillo that lived about five million years ago. The children’s parents immediately notified the Lorenzo Scaglia Municipal Museum of Natural Sciences, which, together with the family and local university students, initiated the rescue of the fossil.
The team from the museum’s Paleontology Laboratory identified the species as “Plohophorus figuratus,” an extinct species of glyptodon. The rescue work lasted several hours and was carried out in difficult conditions due to the high tide. Despite this, they managed to recover some parts of the skeleton, including a part of the tail, a caudal tube, vertebrae, carapace plates, and caudal rings, which allowed the glyptodon to manipulate its medieval mallet to defend itself.
Museum scientists emphasized that the caudal tubes of glyptodonts are one of the “most beautiful” pieces of these animals, as they can show different ornamental patterns, such as rosettes composed of large, rounded figures surrounded by smaller, polygonal figures. In addition, this is the first time that remains of the caudal rings of this species of Glyptodon have been added to the museum’s collection.
The experts also wanted to emphasize the importance of this finding and explained that it is rare to find complete skeletons of prehistoric animals. Usually, parts or sections of it are found, and, therefore, the discoveries contribute to completing a puzzle to better understand the history of life on Earth.
San Carlos Beach in Mar del Plata is known to be one of the most representative paleontological sites of the Upper Cenozoic in all of South America.