The unusual discovery will hopefully allow researchers to clarify if this species exhibited sexual dimorphism as the group is believed to be two adults and two juveniles of differing sexes. “These kind of cases, in which several individuals together who died in the same circumstances, are really exceptional and undoubtedly will give us a lot of information about these enigmatic animals and will allow us to test several hypotheses that we have been driving in recent years,” said palaeontologist on-site Ricardo Bonini, in a statement.

Regarding the sexual dimorphism, "It's not clear on how we are going to evaluate it in these fossils but the objective is to observe changes in the size of the bones because we have four glyptodonts together," Pablo Messineo, archaeologist, professor, and researcher at CONICET and INCUAPA, told IFLScience. "Maybe the bones of the pelvis and ventral shell can show some differences that we should study."

Glyptodons roamed in South America for more than 20 million years, and its thought they may have eventually gone extinct at the hands of early man, who may have used the shells of the dead animals as shelter during bad weather. These enormous, heavily armored relatives of armadillos are a part of the mammalian superorder Xenarthra. Like other Xenarthrans, they were herbivorous animals and as such their anatomy was adapted for protection.