Glyptodon

Glyptodon did not run. It did not fight. It did not need a strategy more

complex than the one it was born with: be impossible to eat. Its shell was

not like a turtle's — thin and light and breakable under enough force.

Glyptodon's shell was a dome of fused bone plates, thick as a shield, heavy

as stone, covering its entire body from neck to tail in an unbroken arc of

biological armor. Smilodon's fangs skidded off it. Andrewsarchus's jaws

could not find purchase. The ice age threw predators and glaciers and

starvation at the world, and Glyptodon rolled through all of it like a

boulder with legs. It grazed the low vegetation of the plains with the

unhurried confidence of something that had already solved the fundamental

problem of existence. The world is dangerous? Build a better shell. The

Resurgence admired speed and cunning and strength. Glyptodon admired none

of these things. It admired thickness. And thickness, it turned out, was

enough.