Builders in southern Peru recently found the fossil of a giant, Ice Age armadillo, which lived as many as 2 million years ago and would have been the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. ''They were carrying out work inside a private home and stumbled upon this surprise during the digging," said Pedro Luna, an archeologist with the National Institute of Culture in the southern city of Cuzco. ''It was an animal that appeared 2 million years before Christ and would have died out 10,000 to 15,000 years BC because of a freeze." He said the fossil was ''almost complete" and was 6 feet 6 inches long, including the tail, 3 feet 6 inches wide, and with an average height of 3 feet. The glyptodon -- which means ''carved tooth" -- had short legs with clawed toes, a dome-shaped bony shell made of plates as much as nearly 3-inches thick, rings of bony armor on its tail, and armor on its head.
REUTERS
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