''Glyptatelus'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

glyptodont Glyptodonts are an extinct clade of large, heavily armoured armadillos, reaching up to in height, and maximum body masses of around 2 tonnes. They had short, deep skulls, a fused vertebral column, and a large bony carapace made up of hundreds o ...

. It lived from the Late

Eocene The Eocene ( ) is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (Ma). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes ...

to the Middle

Oligocene The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch (geology), epoch of the Paleogene Geologic time scale, Period that extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that defin ...

in what is now

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

and

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

Description

This genus is only known from very fragmentary remains from its carapace. From a comparison between those fossils and those of its later relatives, it is assumed that ''Glyptatelus'' was a rather small glyptodont, with a carapace made of polygonal osteoderms welded together to form a rigid structure. The shape of those osteoderms was hexagonal; they featured a large central figure displaced a bit backwards, from which radial grooves branched off, separating some peripheral polygonal figures. In the older forms attributed to ''Glyptatelus'', the individual osteoderms usually had a diameter of 1.3 millimeters and a height of 9 millimeters, while more recent forms possessed osteoderms with a diameter of 25–30 millimeters and a height of 20 millimeters. A fragment of mandible attributed to ''Glyptatelus'' preserve a tooth divided in three lobes, like those of later glyptodonts; the central lobe, however, was quite small. Instead of forming a relief as in the later forms, the vascular dentin corresponds to a central depression.

Classification

The genus ''Glyptatelus'' was first described in 1897 by

Florentino Ameghino Florentino Ameghino (born Giovanni Battista Fiorino Giuseppe Ameghino; September 19, 1853 – August 6, 1911) was an Argentine naturalist, paleontologist, anthropologist and zoologist, whose fossil discoveries on the Argentine Pampas, especial ...

, based on fossils found in

terrains from

Argentine Argentines, Argentinians or Argentineans are people from Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural. For most Argentines, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their ...

Patagonia Patagonia () is a geographical region that includes parts of Argentina and Chile at the southern end of South America. The region includes the southern section of the Andes mountain chain with lakes, fjords, temperate rainforests, and glaciers ...

; the type species is ''Glyptatelus tatusinus'', but other species were later ascribed to the genus, such as ''Glyptatelus fractus'', the oldest species, and ''G. malaspinensis'', described by Ameghino himself in 1902. ''Glyptatelus'' is considered to be one of the oldest glyptodonts, and the archaic structure of its osteoderms seems to indicate a position at the base of the group. Its relative '' Clypeotherium'' was slightly more recent. Two other, more recent, genera, '' Neoglyptatelus'' and ''

Pachyarmatherium ''Pachyarmatherium'' is a genus of extinct large armadillo-like cingulates found in North and South America from the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs, related to the extant armadillos and the extinct pampatheres and glyptodonts. It was present ...

'', have been considered close to ''Glyptatelus''; subsequent analysis tends to indicate that the latter two genera were in reality part of an entirely different clade of cingulates, the Pachyarmatheriidae.

Bibliography

*F. Ameghino. 1897. Mammiféres crétacés de l’Argentine (Deuxième contribution à la connaissance de la fauna mammalogique de couches à Pyrotherium) retaceous mammals of Argentina (second contribution to the knowledge of the mammalian fauna of the Pyrotherium Beds) Boletin Instituto Geografico Argentino 18(4–9):406-521 *F. Ameghino. 1902. Notices préliminaires sur des mammifères nouveaux des terrains Crétacé de Patagonie {preliminary notes on new mammals from the Cretaceous terrains of Patagonia]. Boletin de la Academia Nacional de Ciencias de Córdoba 17:5-70 *G. G. Simpson. 1948. The beginning of the age of mammals in South America. Part I. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 91:1-232 *Fernicola, J. C.; Rinderknecht, A.; Jones, W.; Vizcaíno, S. F.; Porpino, K. (2018). "A New Species of Neoglyptatelus (Mammalia, Xenarthra, Cingulata) from the Late Miocene of Uruguay Provides New Insights on the Evolution of the Dorsal Armor in Cingulates". Ameghiniana. 55 (3): 233–252. doi:10.5710/AMGH.02.12.2017.3150. {{Taxonbar, from=Q19714866 Armadillos Prehistoric placental genera Prehistoric cingulates Eocene xenarthrans Eocene genus first appearances Paleogene mammals of South America Oligocene xenarthrans Oligocene genus extinctions Paleogene Argentina Fossils of Argentina Paleogene Bolivia Fossils of Bolivia Fossil taxa described in 1897 Taxa named by Florentino Ameghino