Look At The Size Of These Fucking Armadillos.
(the second tweet is older but I found it while researching)
A farmer has found the 20,000-year-old remains of four prehistoric armadillos that grew to the size of a car at the bottom of a dried-out riverbed.
Local media said that the farmer stumbled across the ‘four glyptodonts’, a heavily armoured mammal that lived during the Pleistocene epoch and were relatives of present-day armadillos.
They developed in South America around 20 million years ago and spread to southern regions of North America after the continents connected several million years ago.
"An armadillo?? The size of a car?! Well surely that cannot be tru-"
Oh my fuck.
Here I was, prepared to write a blog on how fossils are a scam and that I think anyone who spends time trying to uncover them needs to stop dwelling on the past. Yet, here I am, in shock and awe. Eating my own words. It often takes a bigger man to admit he was wrong but - I was wrong. I'm in on giant armadillos.
The shock factor isn't even because of the fact the fossils were that big. I mean big whoop, your average prehistoric fossil is rather large. I mean, I don't know about you guys but I'm yet to see a Trex sculpture that is small. I'm shocked at the fact that armadillos are actually real. I always thought they were a tall tale of sorts, like bigfoot or perhaps even Rumplestiltskin (bet you didn't think I had a Rumplestiltskin reference in my locker, did ya.)
Know one thing I did know about this fake totally real animal is that they roll up into a ball to defend itself. Like so:
Now imagine one of these massive "carmadillo" (I want to be included on the pun, sue me. I get bad FOMO) things rolling up into a ball. I know, a simply terrifying thought. I would NOT - I repeat - would NOT want to be walking down a dark alley and see one of these motherfuckers balled up. Couldn't be me.
Now based on the size of the fossils, you'd have to think these armadillos were no smaller than one of these puppies:
Yes, one of those weird bubble soccer things that you'd see all over the internet but never actually go out and do because it's highly impractical and outlandish. Not to toot my own horn or anything but I'd say that's a pretty spot-on comparison.
Who knows, maybe armadillos from 20 million years ago were predators and didn't need to cower from other animals. That's the thing about fossils that I'm out on. It may seem like we know everything but it's simply impossible to know. For all we know, that could be some alien that has since left earth. I mean, they just only discovered that some dinosaurs may have had feathers. That's all it is, hypothetical.
PS - I was absolutely devastated to learn that armadillos don't just roll up into a ball and roll around everywhere. I had a very funny line about these massive things rolling around. Turns out they don't so I deleted it. What a waste of God-given abilities.
