Zaedyus pichiy Desmarest, 1804

Zaedyus pichiy Desmarest, 1804 View in CoL

Referred material: Two osteoderms of the pelvic or scapular buckler, one osteoderm of the mobile bands of the dorsal shield, and one phalanx of the hind limb: PIMUZ A/ V 422 ( Fig. 3 View Fig ).

Comment: PIMUZ A/V 422 was initially assigned to Dasypus patagonicus Desmarest, 1819 (Additional file 1: Table S1), a species preliminarily defined by its small size. Tis species was later mentioned as a juvenile synonym of Loricatus pichiy Desmarest, 1804 , occurring in the southern pampas of the province of Buenos Aires and placed in synonymy with Z. pichiy (Superina & Abba, 2014) . Tese osteoderms bring me back to the same problem as for PIMUZ A/V 423 with doubt for the reattribution to C. vellerosus or to Z. pichiy . For PIMUZ A/V 422, the osteoderm of the mobile bands presents a sharper general shape and especially a stronger subdivision within the peripheral figures. In addition, the osteoderms of the pelvic and scapular bucklers show a general subquadratic shape and not rectangular as in C. vellerosus . Finally, the figures of these osteoderms exhibit a stronger convexity. Combined, all of these anatomical features tend to support the attribution of this specimen preferentially to Z. pichiy (Carlini et al., 2016; Superina & Abba, 2014).