[3] Slightly larger than its living relative, the nine-banded armadillo,[2] its fossils are known from Florida and records extend west to New Mexico and north to Iowa and Indiana.

Its maximum length was approximately 1.2 metres (3.9 ft) long, twice the size of the nine-banded armadillo.

The osteoderms of the shell and the limb bones of D. bellus are about two to two and a half times the extent of those of the living modern nine-banded armadillo D. novemcinctus.

D. kappleri, the great long-nosed armadillo, which is the largest living species of Dasypus from tropical South America, has the same features of osteoderms as D. bellus.

This had led many to believe that they might be a single, highly adaptable species that has gone through a course of phenotypical changes along with geographical range fluctuations causing from environmental changes.