Ice age sloth3/17/2023 ![]() ![]() Weighing up to 3,000 pounds, it is the largest and most common one. Their size may have been an adaptation to the colder temperatures faced by Jefferson's ground sloths in the North. Three different types of sloths have been found right here at the Tar Pits, one of which is Harlan’s Ground Sloth. The Old Crow specimens are significantly smaller than fossils of this species found further south. Other northern specimens have been found near Fairbanks, Alaska and near Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. In Yukon, Jefferson's ground sloth fossils are rare and only known from sites along the Old Crow River. Only a single site discovered in North America has yielded Jefferson's ground sloth bones that appear to have been butchered by humans, so it is unlikely their demise was caused by overhunting. There is still considerable scientific debate on what caused the extinction of these ground sloths around 11,000 years ago. There was even a mummified fingernail on the sloth's finger! ![]() Another spectacular find from a cave in Tennessee contained an individual Shasta's ground sloth's bones that were still attached by ligaments and cartilage. One of their distant relatives, the Shasta's ground sloth ( Nothrotheriops shastensis), is famous for the incredibly thick layers of fossilized dung they left preserved in caves of the American southwest. Jefferson's ground sloths probably used caves for protection from the elements and hungry predators. They were also distantly related to anteaters. They were directly related to today's modern sloths. Jefferson's ground sloth fossils are commonly found in the western United States, the Great Lakes region, and Florida. Giant ground sloths were large, lumbering beasts that lived in the Americas during the Ice Age. Jefferson's ground sloth, like its tree-dwelling relatives, was probably a slow, awkward mover on land, with its feet rotated over so it was walking on its ankles and baby toes. Their long, blunt, peg-like teeth were used to strip leaves from shrubs and tree branches. Any information you publish in a comment, profile, work, or Content that you post or import onto AO3 including in summaries, notes and tags, will be accessible. They may have used their long sharp claws in defense, but these claws were probably better suited to grasping for food in tall tree branches. Although the appearance of these giant ground sloths might seem menacing, they were herbivores. A fully grown Jefferson's ground sloth was about the size of an ox, at up to three metres long. ![]()
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