SOME EXTINCT ARGENTINE MAMMALS 91 



if, indeed, he ever succeeded in doing so. That man did 

 exist with the later glyptodons, or those which flourished 

 during the deposition of the Pampas mud, is, however, 

 proved by more than one kind of evidence. For instance, 

 crude drawings of these animals have been found incised 

 on some of the rock surfaces of Patagonia, while in other 

 cases human implements have been disinterred side by side 

 with the bones and shells. Probably the empty carapaces 

 of the larger members of the group were employed by the 

 primitive inhabitants of Argentina as huts, and it is said 

 that they are sometimes even so used at the present day 

 by the Indians. That these animals were not killed off 

 by any living foe — either human or otherwise — may be 

 taken for granted, and we must therefore conclude that this 

 result was probably due to the same general cause which 

 brought about the extermination of the larger Argentine 

 mammals. It may be well to mention that, although some 

 of the living armadillos are carnivorous, it is perfectly 

 evident, from the structure of their teeth, that all the 

 glyptodons subsisted exclusively on a vegetable diet. 



The earliest known representatives of the group occur in 

 the older Tertiary beds of Patagonia, and may be designated 

 pigmy glyptodons, although known scientifically as Propalaeo- 

 hoplophorus. These creatures, which lived side by side with 

 armadillos nearly akin to existing forms, were the dwarfs 

 of their race, the carapace not being more than a couple 

 of feet in length. The plates of the carapace were smooth, 

 and ornamented with a rosette-like sculpture, of which the 

 central ring in the fore part of the shell was raised into 

 a prominent boss. In the form of these plates, as well as 

 in the circumstances that the tail was surrounded from base 

 to tip with a series of knobbed rings, these pigmy glyptodons 

 resembled the ring-tailed glyptodons of the Pampas, of which 



