A farmer has found the 20,000-year-old remains of four prehistoric armadillos that grew to the size of a car at the bottom of a dry river.

Local media said the farmer came across the ‘four glyptodonts’, a heavily armed mammal that lived during the Pleistocene epoch and were relatives of today’s armadillos.

They developed in South America about 20 million years ago and spread to the southern regions of North America after the continents were connected several million years ago.

The large fossils were discovered in a dry river in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, and experts from the Pampa Quaternary Archaeological and Paleontological Research Institute (Incuapa-Conicet) will spend the next week extracting the remains.

Archaeologist PaƄlo Messineo told reporters that a man named Juan de Dios Sota was taking his cows to graze in a nearby field when he noticed the strange shapes in the dried riʋerƄed, as they did not appear to be the remains of horses or cows.

Messineo and a team of scientists arrived at the site to unearth the prehistoric mega-festival.

Messineo said: ‘We went there expecting to find two glyptodonts when the excavation started and then two more were found.

‘It is the first time that there are four animals like this in the same place. Most of them were looking in the same direction as if they were walking towards something.

He added that the sizes indicate that the group was made up of two adults and two young people.

The scientific team will need excavators to remove the projectiles, as they can weigh up to a ton.

Recommended for you Early human habitat, recreated for the first time, shows life was no picnic

The fossils will then undergo further investigation to establish their age, 𝓈ℯ𝓍 and possibly the cause of their death.

It is currently believed that the four glyptodonts lived about 20,000 years ago.

Glyptodonts were a genus of large, heavily armed mammals with a rounded, bony shell and stubby, turtle-like limbs.

They are thought to weigh around 1,000 kilograms (2,205 liters) and could grow to the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.

Remains of the animal have been found in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina and are believed to have become extinct 10,000 years ago.

According to the morphology of their jaw, glyptodonts were herƄiʋors and were also hairy with very slow movements due to their size.