It lived from the Late Eocene to the Middle Oligocene in what is now Argentina and Bolivia.

From a comparison between those fossils and those of its later relatives, it is assumed that Glyptatelus was a rather small glyptodont, with a carapace made of polygonal osteoderms welded together to form a rigid structure.

The shape of those osteoderms was hexagonal; they featured a large central figure displaced a bit backwards, from which radial grooves branched off, separating some peripheral polygonal figures.

The genus Glyptatelus was first described in 1897 by Florentino Ameghino, based on fossils found in Oligocene terrains from Argentine Patagonia; the type species is Glyptatelus tatusinus, but other species were later ascribed to the genus, such as Glyptatelus fractus, the oldest species, and G. malaspinensis, described by Ameghino himself in 1902.

Glyptatelus is considered to be one of the oldest glyptodonts, and the archaic structure of its osteoderms seems to indicate a position at the base of the group.