Doedicurus

Doedicurus is an extinct armored plant-eating armadillo. Its heavy bony armor and spiked tail club helped protect it from sabre-toothed predators and other hunters. It was part of the South American Pleistocene megafauna 1.8 million to 11,000 thousand years ago.

• History: Doedicurus was first described by Richard Owen in 1847 based on part of a tail. Owen originally gave it the name Glyptodon clavicaudatus, the species name meaning ‘club-tailed’. However, nearly three decades later in 1874, Burmeister reclassified the species and gave it a new genus, Doedicurus.