novemcinctus the one shown on this webpage is D. distribution includes Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado (McBee and Baker, 1982).

Dasypus novemcinctus is the only xenarthran that occurs in the wild in the United States. The nine-banded armadillo has a broad geographic range, extending from northwestern Argentina and Uruguay to the southern and midwestern United States (McBee and Baker, 1982). novemcinctus in North and South America typically only have eight bands (Nowak, 1991). However, the number of bands varies between eight and eleven (McBee and Baker, 1982) D. Within this large unnamed clade, Xenarthra is the sister taxon to Boreoeutheria (all of the remaining placental groups Murphy et al., 2001).ĭasypus novemcinctus derives its name from the presence of usually nine bands of bony armor along its body. An analysis of molecular data places Xenarthra in a large unnamed clade of placental mammals that includes all of the major extant groups except Afrotheria. Morphological data place Xenarthra as a basally diverging branch of Placentalia, often as the sister taxon to Pholidota (Novacek, 1992a, b). Other members of this group include extant tree sloths, extant anteaters, the extinct ground sloths, and extinct glyptodonts which were closely related to armadillos. Similar to other armadillos, the top of the head, the back and sides of the body, the tail, and the top of the legs and feet are covered with ossified dermal scutes.Īrmadillos belong to a group of exclusively New World mammals named Xenarthra that is characterized by having accessory vertebral articulations. novemcinctus is a smallish armadillo with total lengths of 615-800 mm and weights ranging from 3-8 kg (McBee and Baker, 1982). Dasypus novemcinctus, the nine-banded armadillo, is one of six extant species of Dasypus, the long-nosed armadillos (McBee and Baker, 1982).

Armadillo lizard skull