Giant Sloths facts

While investigating facts about Giant Sloths Size and Giant Sloths In Peru, I found out little known, but curios details like:

For years, scientists didn't know what caused mysterious cave networks in South America. In 2010, they learned that the caves were actually tunnels dug by ancient giant sloths.

how big were giant sloths?

There are mysterious tunnels in South America, some thousands of feet long, thought to have been dug by extinct, giant sloths.

What did giant sloths look like?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what happened to giant sloths. Here are 38 of the best facts about Giant Sloths Extinct and Giant Sloths Still Alive I managed to collect.

what did giant sloths eat?

There's only 8 species of bears in the world: brown bears, Asian black bears, American black bears, sun bears, sloth bears, spectacled bears, polar bears, and giant pandas.
Avocados used to be eaten by giant ground sloths and were saved from extinction by humans
Many large fruits are considered "ghosts", because large animals like the giant sloth that used to disperse them have gone extinct
Avocados are optimally adapted to be eaten and digested by an animal far larger than any alive today in the Americas. It is theorized they originally evolved their current form to allow their seeds to be spread by animals like the extinct giant ground sloth.
Not only did there used to be giant sloth, but there were giant MARINE sloths
Giant sloths with wolverine-like claws used to roam America, and humans hunted them to extinction
When human beings arrived in the Americas, 14,000 years ago, they found ground sloths the weight of elephants; a beaver eight feet from nose to tail; armadillos like small cars; giant lions and sabertooths". NYT
Many North American plants have fruit, spines, etc. believed to be adapted for an extinct giant mammal (megafauna) like mammoths and ground sloths
The first people to exist in the Zion National Park area are believed to have hunted camel, giant sloth and mammoth approximately 12,000 years ago. They tracked the animals in the region but when the animals died out about 8,000 years ago the way of life changed.
About Earth's own earthbending badgermoles: South American giant sloths (of avocado-eating fame) apparently dug massive tunnels and burrows

giant sloths facts — What do giant sloths eat?

Why are giant ground sloths extinct?

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We wouldn’t have avocados if it weren’t for the giant sloth.

Manatees, giant anteaters, three-toed sloths, two-toed sloths, jaguars, and Orinoco crocodiles can be found in Venezuela.

No native animals presently eat the fruit of the Osage Orange tree. Scientists believe that the seeds were once dispersed by giant ground sloths and mastodons. - source

Mammals found in Kaieteur National Park include pale throated sloths, many bat species, bush dogs, giant river otters, kinkajous, Brazilian tapirs, pacas, and tree rats among many other species.

Thomas Jefferson wrote a paper on a giant ground sloth fossil and told Lewis and Clark to keep and eye out for a giant clawed beast. - source

When did giant sloths go extinct?

There have been fossils and bones found in Carlsbad Caverns National Park dating from the ice age. These include the bones from giant sloths, camels, lions, and jaguars.

How big were giant ground sloths?

Cucurbita plants, which includes pumpkins, gourds and squashes, flourished during the Holocene in areas where large mammals such as giant sloths, mastodons and mammoths roamed. The huge animals cleared the land that the plants needed to survive and also dispersed their seeds via their dung

The Giant Ground Sloth (Megatherium) These giants typically stood at seven metres tall and weighed seven tons. They were active in North America until as recently as 11,000 years ago but appear to have been killed off either by Ice Age related changes of climate or by human hunting activity.

In the last ice-age 11,000 to 80,000 years ago, animals such as Woolly Mammoths and Giant Sloths standing 12 feet tall lived in and around the Grand Canyon. Their bones have been dug up in caves of the Grand Canyon.

Archaeoindris is an extinct giant lemur and the largest primate known to have evolved on Madagascar, comparable in size to a male gorilla. It belonged to a family of extinct lemurs known as "sloth lemurs"

The giant ground sloth ( now extinct ) was the size of an elephant

When did giant sloths live?

Giant Ground Sloths (Megatherium sp.), which inhabited the Americas until about 11,000 years ago, could reach a height of 20ft (6m) or about as tall as a large T. rex

Some plants have an evolutionary left over from when large herbivores like the giant ground sloth roamed the earth. The plant grew these thorns as a defense and with no evolutionary pressure to get rid of them, they still have them today even though the sloths are long gone.

The Megatherium, a Giant Ground Sloth, Was One of the Biggest Land Mammals of It's Time Only Being Exceeded by Mammoths and Paraceratherium

How did giant sloths go extinct?

Thataloccnus, a giant sloth that was semiaquatic and that spent its time foraging for plants underwater, just like a marine iguana.

The existence of the now extinct giant ground living sloth. it lived on the american continent along with people and where the size of an elephant.

Avocado pits are so big because they were intended to be swallowed by an extinct animal called the giant ground sloth

There used to be ground walking giant sloths weighing up to 4 tonnes and measuring up to 6m in length from head to tail.

In Brazil there are dozens of huge tunnel complexes called paleo-burrows. They were dug by prehistoric species such as giant ground sloth and there are claw marks all over the walls. They are often large enough for an adult man to stand upright in them.

When human beings arrived in the Americas, 14,000 years ago, they found ground sloths the weight of elephants; a beaver eight feet from nose to tail; armadillos like small cars; giant lions and sabertooths".

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