You are in the grasslands of South America, 20,000 years ago.

The air was thick with the scent of wet grass and approaching rain. While you were walking by the edge of a dry riverbed, the ground seems to move, making you pause.

An armadillo-like creature low to the ground, easily 400–600 kilograms and the size of a modern Volkswagen Beetle, was moving sluggishly, its thick, mosaic-patterned shell barely clearing the weeds. It doesn't look like a modern armadillo; its armor is rigid, not banded. It moves with agonizing slowness through the tall grass, using its short, stout limbs to graze peacefully on scrub brush.

Just then, it spots you and it tensed up, sensing you as a threat. Instead of running away, it settles down, withdrawing its head into its protective, domed carapace.