#ground sloths

[antiqueanimals]

Terra: The Member's Magazine of The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. 1989 Wall Calender: Treasures of the Tar Pits. Illustration by Mark Hallett.

Internet Archive

[demon-presenting-nipples]

@fatehbaz

[shadows-and-science-gone-mad]

The fact that ground sloths lived in goddamn burrows still completely blows my mind.

Like, these things...

(img source: http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/species/m/megatherium.html)

...dug fucking subterranean tunnels to live in.

(img source: https://www.earthtouchnews.com/discoveries/discoveries/these-giant-tunnels-in-south-america-arent-caves-theyre-prehistoric-burrows/)

[eartharchives]

Footprints prove humans hunted giant sloths during the Ice Age

Footprints of humans and giant sloths show a dramatic chase sequence from more than 10,000 years ago.

Giant ground sloths like Megatherium were elephant-sized herbivores that, with sharp claws and thick muscle, would have been difficult for prehistoric humans to hunt — though that doesn’t appear to have been a deterrent.

[eartharchives]

Human arrivals wiped out the Caribbean’s giant ground sloths

Many giant mammals in the Americas have died out but it has been hard to say whether humans or natural events were responsible. Now, in the Caribbean at least, we know

Who killed the giant ground sloth? Or the mammoth and sabre-toothed cat, come to that.  Was it humans or a natural event, like the end of the last ice age? The question is endlessly debated. But the answer, at least in the Caribbean, now seems certain: it was humans.

[robiniart]

Happy, Happy Sloth Acrylic portrait of a beautiful, happy tree sloth, swinging through the jungle, accompanied by spider fairy friends.

[dinosaur-discourse]

what's your favorite prehistoric mammal?

Prehistoric mammals are honestly weirder to me than dinosaurs.  I think it’s because, unlike dinosaurs - which aren’t really like any modern living thing - prehistoric mammals are so similar to animals alive today, while simultaneously being extremely strange and unusual.

Case in point: the giant ground sloth.

Modern sloths, or “tree sloths”, are best known for hanging on their backs in trees and being lazy.  However, their ground-dwelling ancestors were fairly active, and are believed to have lived similarly to the therizinosaurs of the dinosaur age, standing erect to shear branches from trees.  They’re best known for being absolutely enormous.  The best-known species, Megatherium, was one of the largest land mammals of all time, measuring twenty feet in length and weighing up to four tons.

Megatherium was native to South America, at a time when the Americas were separated.  When volcanic activity formed the Isthmus of Panama and connected the two continents, numerous animal and plant species emigrated between the two continents, in an event known as “the Great American Interchange”.  Megatherium and its relatives migrated to North America, where they survived until a shockingly recent date - approximately ten thousand years ago.  Why the ground sloths went extinct is uncertain, but human hunting is believed to be a factor.

[adelehawkins]

My border drawing skills need some work. So do my watercoloring skills.

This is a study of a Charles R. Knight painting. He was a pretty baller paleo-artist back in the day.