Rearing on its hind legs, the giant ground sloth would have been a formidable prey for anyone, let alone humans without modern weapons. Tightly muscled, angry and swinging its fore legs tipped with wolverine-like claws, it ...
Archaeology
Apr 26, 2018
2
783
Why did we take so long to invent civilization? Modern Homo sapiens first evolved roughly 250,000 to 350,000 years ago. But initial steps towards civilization—harvesting, then domestication of crop plants—began only around ...
Archaeology
Jan 3, 2020
16
1641
If you could travel back in time to South America thousands of years ago, you might have caught a glimpse of an animal known as a glyptodont living alongside giant ground sloths and saber-toothed cats. Glyptodonts looked ...
Archaeology
Feb 22, 2016
3
2023
Unless you live in the tropical rainforests of South or Central America, most of the sloths you'll encounter will be two-toed sloths. This is because they are able to eat quite a varied diet and are therefore relatively easy ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 18, 2019
0
7
Archaeologists who have been exploring the world's largest underwater cave—recently discovered in Mexico—presented their findings Monday, including fossils of giant sloths and an elaborate shrine to the Mayan god of commerce.
Paleontology & Fossils
Feb 20, 2018
0
723
For the first time, a dramatic global climate shift has been linked to the impact in Quebec of an asteroid or comet, Dartmouth researchers and their colleagues report in a new study. The cataclysmic event wiped out many of ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 2, 2013
28
0
Bears are not cats or dogs, and feeding them like they are likely shortens their lives.
Plants & Animals
Oct 3, 2022
0
429
Today's sloths might be known as slow, small animals, but their ancestors developed large body sizes at an amazing rate, according to an evolutionary reconstruction published today in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary ...
Evolution
Sep 10, 2014
7
0
Every parent knows the feeling. Your child is crying and wants to go home, you pick them up to comfort them and move faster, your arms tired with a long walk ahead—but you cannot stop now. Now add to this a slick mud surface ...
Archaeology
Oct 9, 2020
1
1817
A new study led by researchers at the American Museum of Natural History suggests that Mylodon—a ground sloth that lived in South America until about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago—was not a strict vegetarian like all of ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 7, 2021
0
453
