I was just learning about Armadillo on TV. They are a mammal with a leathery armour shell.
Ah, That's interesting that its kind of like armor. I wonder what they really contribute to the ecosystems that they are in
Not really sure but they seem to need that armour for survival. Armadillo is a spanish word that mean "little armoured one".
haha, thats cute. How long has the armadillo been around?
Can you believe that they say they have been around for 35 million years!? Wow! Maybe the arour is to protect them from the dinosaurs, lol.
I think they are gonna need more than some leather armour to help them with that!
diverged some 35 million years ago, much more recently than previously assumed.
Distribution.
Like all of the Xenarthra lineages, armadillos originated in South America. Due to the continent's former isolation, they were confined there for most of the Cenozoic. The recent formation of the Isthmus of Panama allowed a few members of the family to migrate northward into southern North America by the early Pleistocene, as part of the Great American Interchange. (Some of their much larger cingulate relatives, the pampatheres and chlamyphorid glyptodonts, made
leathery armour shell and long sharp claws for digging. They have short legs, but can move quite quickly. The average length of an armadillo is about , including tail. The giant armadillo grows up to and weighs up to , while the pink fairy armadillo has a length of only . When threatened by a predator, Tolypeutes species frequently roll up into a ball.
Etymology.
The word "armadillo" means "little armoured one" in Spanish. The Aztecs called them "āyōtōchtli" , Nahuatl for "turtle