page_title: Doedicurus
section_title: Paleoecology
hierarchical_section_title: Doedicurus / Paleoecology
caption_attribution_description: Português: Exposição que marca os 200 anos do nascimento do naturalista Charles Darwin, na Esplanada dos Ministérios, em Brasília Doedicurus fossil.
context_page_description: Doedicurus, or Dædicurus, is an extinct genus of glyptodont from South America containing one species, D. clavicaudatus. Glyptodonts are a member of the family Chlamyphoridae, which also includes some modern armadillo species, and they are classified in the order Xenarthra alongside sloths and anteaters. Being a glyptodont, it was a rotund animal with heavy armor and a carapace. Averaging at an approximate 1,400 kg, it was one of the largest glyptodonts to have ever lived. Though glyptodonts were quadrupeds, large ones like Doedicurus may have been able to stand on two legs like other xenarthrans. It notably sported a spiked tail club, which may have weighed 40 or 65 kg in life, and it may have swung this in defense against predators or in fights with other Doedicurus at speeds of perhaps 11 m/s.
  Doedicurus was likely a grazer, but its teeth and mouth, like those of other glyptodonts, seem unable to have chewed grass effectively, which may indicate a slow metabolism. Doedicurus existed during the Pleistocene.
context_section_description: Following the formation of the Isthmus of Panama about 2.8 mya, South America's long period of isolation from the rest of the world ended and it was invaded by North American species as part of the Great American Interchange. Glyptodonts would have encountered new large mammalian carnivores such as the short-faced bear, saber toothed cats such as Smilodon and Homotherium, and the jaguar. These had replaced the former endemic top predators: sebecid crocodiles, madtsoiid snakes, terror birds, and the marsupial-like sparassodonts. In addition to bears and cats, other immigrants to South America include horses, camels, deer, tapir, elephants (gomphotheres), tapirs, and New World rats. Native Pleistocene South American mammals include xenarthrans, such as glyptodonts, ground sloths, anteaters, and armadillos; as well as marsupials, the large toxodonts, and native rodents such as New World porcupines.
  Doedicurus is among the most commonly identified glyptodont genera of the Pleistocene, alongside Glyptodon, Neosclerocalyptus, Hoplophorus, Neuryurus, and Panochthus. Glyptodonts generally inhabited open grassland with temperate to cool climate. It appears to have been restricted to the cold, humid Chaco-Pampean plains of northeastern Patagonia. Fossils have been found in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. The Pleistocene was characterized by frequent cold/warm cycles (glacials and interglacials), and sequences in Patagonia record over 15 glacial cycles, indicated by the switch from loess (deposited during glacials) to paleosol (during interglacials). Glacials may have seen an increase in savanna, whereas interglacials (including modern day) are characterized by an expansion of rainforests.
  Doedicurus may be the most recent-surviving glyptodont species, with the latest fossils suggested to date to about 8,000–7,000 years ago in the Pampas, though a G. claviceps specimen was contentiously dated to about 4,300 years ago. Doedicurus, like many other megafauna around the world, went extinct in the Quaternary extinction event, which may have been caused by some combination of overhunting by humans and climate change. A butchered specimen dating to 7,500–7,000 years ago in this region on the edge of a swamp at the La Moderna site in Argentina shows that Doedicurus was hunted by the first human settlers of South America and coexisted with them for several thousand years. Because many other South American megafauna also seem to have persisted for some time following the close of the Pleistocene in this region—such as the armadillo Eutatus, the giant ground sloth Megatherium, the American horse, and the dog Dusicyon avus—the Pampas may have been a refuge zone, providing productive grassland which was likely in decline elsewhere on the continent. Their final demise may have been brought on or simply accelerated by human hunting. However, more recent research has suggested that these Holocene ages at Pampean sites are likely an underestimate, possibly due to contamination by humic acids, and that the sites probably date to the Late Pleistocene.
caption: Doedicurus fossil in Brazil
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