Story By: Jonathan Macias, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
Video Credit: CEN/@museoscaglia
This is the moment a team of palaeontologists dig up a 3-million-year-old fossil belonging to an armoured mammal which could grow to the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.
The remains of a prehistoric 3-million-year-old mammal were found on the Playa Paradise beach in the coastal city of Mar del Plata in the province of Buenos Aires in Eastern Argentina.
According to the Lorenzo Scaglia Museum of Natural Science, a team of palaeontologists found the fossiled bony tail of a glyptodont named Plohophorus, a mammal similar to an armadillo that lived 3 million years ago in the region.
The museum wrote: “We feel really proud of the team of palaeontologists of the Scaglia Museum who recently found a glyptodont which is more than 3 million years old. We have everything.”
The footage shows several palaeontologists digging out the fossiled tale of the mammal and putting it into a piece of cloth to preserve it.
One of the palaeontologists is heard saying “this is a wonder”.
Reports said that palaeontologist excavated for more than six hours until they managed to dig it out a few days before Christmas Eve.
Local media report that some parts of the bony skull of the mammal were also found days before.
Glyptodonts were a genus of large heavily armoured mammals with a rounded, bony shell and squat limbs similar to a turtle.
They are believed to have weighed around 1,000 kilogrammes (2,205 lbs) and could grow to the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.
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