Jose Antonio Nievas is an Argentine farmer who once made an incredible yet strange discovery near his farm; a huge black egg about three feet tall.
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Nievas claimed that he stumbled upon the mostly intact shell, that was thought to be 10,000 years old, on a riverbank on his farm in Carlos Spegazzini on Christmas Day. Nievas' wife stated:
My husband went out to the car and when he came back he said, 'Hey, I just found an egg that looks like it came from a dinosaur.' We all laughed because we thought it was a joke.
Not actually what he thought he had found
Nievas told the local news that he discovered part of the shell covered in mud and started to dig around it. Convinced that it was adinosaur egg, he contacted scientists to investigate it further. The specialists deduced that the fossil was not a dinosaur egg. It was not an egg at all, but a giant carapace.
The glyptodon, the modern day armadillo's distant cousin
It would have belonged to a glyptodon, an animal that looks like an armadillo. These large, distant relatives of the modern-day armadillo went extinct around the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago and were known to grow over three metres tall and weigh nearly two tons.
Palaeontologist Alejandro Kramarz of the Bernadino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum saw the footage of the giant egg and stated:
There is no doubt that it looks like a glyptodont. The animal became extinct thousands of years ago and it is very common to find their fossils in this region.
Take a look at the video above to see the bizarre discovery for yourself!
