Sculpture Glyptodon
This Glyptodon sculpture stands 140 cm high
This is a paleontological reconstruction of Glyptodon clavipes commissioned by museum Historyland. Paleontologist Dick Mol was appointed to approve this impressive model. The sculpture is life-size, approximately 3 meters in length and 140 cm in height. Glyptodonts were giant extinct Armadillos weighing about 1600 kg in life. It lived during the Pleistocene epoch in South America and was part of the superorder of mammals called Xenarthrans, subfamily of Glyptodontinae (meaning ”carved tooth”.) Its protective carapace is composed of bony plates, called osteoderms. For this sculpture, I made a mold from a real section of a fossil carapace and replicated it onto its shell. Each scute supports a pair of hair follicles. Therefore, the model had to support thousands of hairs, which had to be implanted manually one at a time. The head anatomy and morphology were reconstructed using a real fossil skull from Argentina. It was a very heavily armored herbivore and supported an impressively weaponized tail that was covered in solid bony spikes and used for defense and most likely mating battles.