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Updated: May 16, 2025
In South America, in the Pampean formation, he had discovered "great fossil animals covered with armor like that on the existing armadillos," and had been struck with this similarity of type between ancient and existing faunas of the same region.
I was much impressed by this unexpected exhibition; evidently this species of armadillo only curls up as a last resort, and ordinarily trusts to its speed, and to the protection its build and its armor give it while running, in order to reach its burrow or other place of safety. Twice, while laying railway tracks near Sao Paulo, Kermit had accidentally dug up armadillos with a steam-shovel.
This scene had scarcely ended when a pair of fresh armadillos were espied, coming from the farther edge of the opening, and, in fact, from the edge of a precipice, for the river flowed close by, and its channel was at that point shut in by cliffs. These two were large fellows, and were making speedily towards the carrion, in order to get up before it was all gone.
Among carnivorous creatures the very opposite is sometimes the truth; and some animals as the tapir, for instance that feed exclusively on sweet and succulent vegetables, produce a most bitter flesh for themselves. About this there is no standing law either way. Guapo did not call them armadillos he had several Indian names for different kinds of them.
This scene had scarcely ended when a pair of fresh armadillos were espied, coming from the farther edge of the opening, and, in fact, from the edge of a precipice, for the river flowed close by, and its channel was at that point shut in by cliffs. These two were large fellows, and were making speedily towards the carrion, in order to get up before it was all gone. Guapo could stand it no longer.
In this collection there are extinct species of all the thirty-two genera, excepting four, of the terrestrial quadrupeds now inhabiting the provinces in which the caves occur; and the extinct species are much more numerous than those now living: there are fossil ant-eaters, armadillos, tapirs, peccaries, guanacos, opossums, and numerous South American gnawers and monkeys, and other animals.
Its fauna is now marked, for instance, by the presence of medium-sized deer and cats, fox-like wolves, and small camel-like creatures, as well as by the presence of small armadillos, sloths, and ant-eaters.
Farther on, coatis, with short ears, and long tails; companies of little Guinea pigs; armadillos, a species of hedge-hog without the quills, but covered with an armor of scales, more compact and impervious than that of the ancient knights of the Middle Ages, arrange themselves along the line of his route, as if to pass him in review.
I told him that this inoffensive animal, which feeds on insects and roots, belonged to the order Edentata mammals in which the system of teeth is incomplete. "But," said he, "I have seen pictures in which armadillos are represented with armor formed of small squares." "That is another species, which also lives in Mexico," replied Sumichrast.
Its territory is over 600,000 square miles in extent, and within its bounds Nature displays almost every possible panorama, and all climates. There are burning plains, the home of the emu, armadillos, and ants; sandy deserts, where the wind drifts the sand like snow, piling it up in ever-shifting hills about thirty feet in height.
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