Doedicurus is a well-known Glyptodont. It had a bony club covered with spikes at the end of a stiff shaft on its tail. Glyptodonts first appeared during the Early Miocene Epoch. They developed from armadillo-like mammals with bony plates of "armour" which were arranged in rings. They were herbivores (plant eaters), and reached the peak of their success as grazers on the grasslands of South America and the Southern regions of North America during the Pliocene Epoch and Pleistocene Epoch

The American mastodon (Mammut americanum) was a large, elephant-like herbivore. It ranged in height from approximately 7 feet (2.1 meters) in females, to nearly 10 feet (3 meters) in males; an adult mastodon could weigh as much as 6 tons (5400 kilograms). Its head was equipped with a flexible trunk, small ears, and tusks. The tusks grew straight forward, nearly parallel to one another, and curved slightly upward. Unlike modern elephants and extinct mammoths, the mastodon had cuspate molar teeth. The name "mastodon" is a Greek derivative—mastos, "breast," and odon(t), "tooth"—that references the animal's teeth, which have crowns consisting of distinct rounded cusps.t was mostly adapted to conifer forests and marsh. It fed on plants (conifer twigs, swamp plants, larch, spruce, pine, grass, mosses, etc.) and used its tusks to break branches.