The novel “The Antares Incident” begins with paleontology – 09/29/2023 – Darwin Wallah

Maybe I’m seeing patterns that don’t exist, or maybe we’re dealing with a strange paleontological conspiracy, which has been sending subliminal messages into the brains of major 20th-century Brazilian fiction writers. Whichever choice is correct, the truth is that I have just stumbled upon, for the second time, references to giant mammals in Ice Age Brazil in a work of first-rate literature. I’m referring to Incident at Antares, the latest novel by Errico Verissimo from Rio Grande do Sul. Originally published in 1971, the work begins in the following curious way:

“Those familiar with the matter claim that the fossil bones recently found during an excavation carried out on land in the municipality of Antares, on the border between Brazil and Argentina, belong to a glyptodon, a pre-Flood animal, which, according to a graphical reconstruction of Paleontology: It was a type of giant armadillo with solid, solid armor, roughly the size of a Volkswagen car, apart from its enormous club-like tail studded with sharp spines. It is estimated that during the Ice Age, around millions of years ago, not only glyptodonts and megathorians inhabited This is a very low-lying area in South America, where – only God knows for sure – when the river known today as Uruguay was formed. However, it is not known at what time in the Cenozoic era the first specimens appeared in that region of southern Brazil. From a rational person. However, everything leads us to believe that this problem has never worried the Antaro people.”

For those who haven’t seen a fatter one before, here’s the glyptodon:

Fossil encounters and references to the Ice Age also caught my attention “O Recado do Morro,” by Guimarães Rosa from Minas Gerais, as I mentioned in this post last year. I’m just beginning to read Incident at Antares, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for other important passages.

I would like to thank readers if they can direct me to other references to prehistory in Brazilian literature. Does anyone remember more?

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