Mariano Del Papa (left), an anthropologist from the National University of La Plata, and his team have discovered fossil remains with cut marks of a specimen of Neosclerocalyptus, an extinct genus of large armored mammals – related to today’s armadillos – which lived in South America during the Pleistocene. The dating of the bones, found on the bank of the Reconquista River, in the north of the Pampas region, indicates that the animal was hunted by humans about 21,000 years ago.
Analyses in the lab have documented cut marks on areas of the glyptodont’s pelvis, tail, and armor consistent with impacts made with stone tools. These anthropic markings, according to the researchers, show that humans butchered their prey with lithic artifacts in search of the most abundant areas of meat. The age of the animal has been fairly precise – between 21,090 and 20,811 years ago – thanks to radiocarbon dating of the bones and sediments of the stratigraphic sequence in which they appeared.

Model of ‘Neosclerocalyptus ornatus’. Museum of La Plata.
Source: Un estudio desvela que los ‘Homo sapiens’ cazaron especies de la megafauna en la actual Argentina hace 21.000 años. – Arqueologia, Historia Antigua y Medieval – Terrae Antiqvae
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