Page 181 - The Dinosaur Book and Other Wonders of the Prehistoric World (DK-Smithsonian)

Mylodon hide Palaeochiropteryx

Armor fossil fragments Bats such as the plates called osteoderms.
The tough armor of
Glyptodon was made
up of hundreds of bony
47-million-year-old
Palaeochiropteryx flew on
wings of naked, stretched skin.

The fur of this ground Glyptodon
sloth is so well preserved
that it was once thought the
animal might not be extinct.

The fossils of Eomaia
are some of the earliest to
be found with traces of fur.
Eomaia

Glyptodon
was about the
size and shape
of a Volkswagen
Glyptodon had
Beetle. powerful claws
for climbing
and digging.

around the bones. Actual fur has been found on 47 million years ago. Other fossils preserve
fragments of Mylodon hide preserved for more the armor of armadillolike animals such
than 12,000 years in cold, dry South American as Glyptodon and Doedicurus, and the
caves. Hair can be modified to form prickly fossils of some extinct mammals show traces
spines for defense, as in echidnas and the of tough, overlapping scales like those of a
hedgehoglike Pholidocercus, which lived modern pangolin. 179
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