Giant armadillo fossil found up mountain armadillo fossil found
Scientists searching for fossils high in the Andes mountains in
Chile have unearthed the remains of a tank-like mammal related
to armadillos that grazed 18 million years ago. "It looks
different than almost anything out on the landscape today. There
really isn't anything that's comparable today in terms of its
body form," says Dr John Flynn of the American Museum of Natural
History in New York. The creature, Parapropalaehoplophorus
septentrionalis, was a primitive relative of a line of heavily
armoured mammals. The creature is a member of a family called
glyptodonts that originated in South America and later entered
North America after the two continents joined 3 million years
ago. Details of the creature, which weighed 90 kilograms and was
76 centimetres long, are published in the Journal of Vertebrate
Paleontology. The scientists discovered the remains in 2004
working at 4300 metres in the Andes. The conditions - thin air,
scarce water and bitt