Ancient Humans Hunted 20-Foot-Tall Sloths and Likely Caused the Mammal's Extinction

Sloths once came in a dizzying array of sizes. Here’s why

A new fossil and DNA analysis traces how dozens of sloth species responded to climate shifts and humans. Just two small tree-dwelling sloths remain today.

Ancient Humans Hunted 20-Foot-Tall Sloths and Likely Caused the Mammal's Extinction

Sloth size and habitat shifted multiple times over the past 35 million years, but human hunting likely drove the slower, larger species to extinction.

An investigation reveals how the megaterians, who inhabited the American continent, disappeared 12,000 years ago because of human activity and how part of that lineage evolved from a common ancestor to give rise to today's lazy trees.

An investigation led by an Argentine reveals how the megaterians, who inhabited the American continent, disappeared 12,000 years ago because of human activity and how part of that lineage evolved from a common ancestor to give rise to the present-day tree sloths In 1787, when Brother Manuel Torres found a lot of huge bones on the banks of the Luján River, in present-day Argentina, no one knew very well what creature it was.

In ancient times, sloths had a variety of body sizes, which were influenced by their habitats. Their numbers declined due to the pressure of human activities, which led to the extinction of large ground-dwelling sloths. Small tree-dwelling sloths survived because they avoided direct human pressure. They flourished for tens of millions of years, but declined sharply after reaching their peak in the Pleistocene.

Today's sloths are hardly larger than a cat and can only be assigned to two genera: two-finger and three-finger sloths. Originally, however, they belonged to a diverse group of animals, which developed isolated in America for about 35 million years and produced more than 100 different genera, among them huge species, which reached the dimensions of elephants. [...] The post Why the giant rotting animals died out first appeared on wissenschaft.de.