1997: The finding

During the severe drought that southern Uruguay underwent in 1997, many water courses went dry, especially the smaller ones, to much worry of local farmers that use their waters to irrigate their crops. One of those streams, located near the city of Sauce, left exposed a treasure consisting of remains of the South American Pleistocene megafauna (glyptodontes and the giant sloth Lestodon). The students of Sauce highschool, their teachers and neighbours extracted part of that material, about 300 fossils, before the rain made the stream go back to its usual level.