STL Science Center

STL Science Center

02 May 2017

Glyptodon on Paper

As one of the longer known fossil animals, a lot of articles, lectures, and descriptions of Glyptodon have been published. These have been published in peer reviewed journals and in annals of older collections of lectures and presentations. The older articles include descriptions of osteology by Huxley in 1865 as well as the dentition and partial skeletons of Glyptodon as reported by Owen in 1841. Glyptodon has never been solely an English find; as we saw yesterday the animal is known from South America also. Some works like Nodot's 1856 book (French) or Chavez-Aponte's 2008 article (Spanish) have made Glyptodon an internationally known fossil animal in multiple languages. As the years have gone by the articles have become more and more scientific, which is both a blessing and a little sad. Observation papers like Burmeister's 1864 paper on museum specimen observations have left us, but it was replaced by papers like Osborn's 1903 paper and more recent, more in depth and rigorous investigations. These include fetal remains, protein structures, and even estimations of body size based on limb proportions.

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