I have a collection of animal skulls including those from dog, cat, raccoon, and squirrel. They are road-killed specimens. I was taking a stroll during my vacation last month at Callaway Gardens and found a skull that at first I couldn’t identify. I began to consider it as armadillo, then turned my head and saw the bleached carapace of an armadillo, thus confirming my diagnosis. It was near a road and likely was killed by a collision with a car. Armadillos use roadways to colonize new territory and are especially vulnerable to the danger posed by vehicles. The nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) has recolonized southeastern North America over the past 100 years after being absent from the region for 10,000 years. Genetic studies suggest many Pleistocene-aged specimens of armadillos found at fossil sites were wrongly identified as being the beautiful armadillo (Dasypus bellus), an extinct species twice the size of the nine-banded armadillo, but they were actually the latter. (See: https://markgelbart.wordpress.com/2017/01/19/a-recent-study-of-pleistocene-armadillo-dna-yields-2-surprising-results/ )
Armadillo skull I found at Callaway Gardens.
Armadillo carapace, bleached from a lengthy exposure to the sun, found near the skull.
Another specimen of a xenarthran (a group including sloths, anteaters, armadillos, and glyptodonts) was recently excavated along the Reconquista River in Merlo, Argentina, and it is of much greater importance because the authors of the below referenced study propose it is evidence humans butchered it 21,000 years ago. The specimen was identified as a Neosclerocalyptus sp., a type of now extinct glyptodont. It couldn’t be identified to the species level because it was missing its skull. Scientists believe humans butchered the animal on a sandbar, and it was partially covered in river sediment before eolian winds covered it completely with sand. Scientists are confident in the calibrated radio-carbon dates taken from the beast’s hip bone, indicating the animal lived 21,000 years ago. It’s consistent with the stratigraphic evidence. They dated a clam shell in sediment beneath where the glyptodont remains were found and that dated to 30,000 years BP.
Image of glyptodont from the below referenced study with the bones that show evidence suggesting human butchery.
Image showing cut marks that the authors of the below study believe were from a stone knife.
Scientists found 32 cut marks on the glyptodont bones, and they were strategically placed as if the butcher was cutting off the largest most palatable pieces of meat. They were v-shaped, evidence the marks were made by human-made knives and not by carnivore or rodent gnawing. The former are u-shaped and the latter are w-shaped. Some archaeologists believe v-shaped incisions can also be made by bones rolling against rocks in river currents, but the authors of this study seem certain humans made these marks. However, there is no lithic evidence (no tools), and of course, no human remains found nearby. If humans did butcher this glyptodont, it would show humans were roaming the Americas thousands of years earlier than previously thought. There is some tantalizing but uncertain evidence of humans at other sites in South America and southwestern North America that suggests humans were in the Americas about 20,000 years ago.
A glyptodont provided plenty of protein–they weighed a ton. Glyptodonts differed from armadillos in the structure of their carapace. It was inflexible like a turtle shell. Armadillo carapaces are flexible, allowing them to roll up in a defensive ball.
Reference:
Del Papa, M. et. al.
“Anthropic Cut Marks in Extinct Megafauna Bones from the Pampean Region (Argentina) at the Last Glacial Maximum”
PLOS One July 2024
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