Giant Sloth
The giant ground sloth was one of the enormous creatures that thrived during
the ice ages. Looking a little bit like an oversized hamster it probably fed
on leaves found on the lower branches of trees or bushes. The largest of these
ground sloths was Megatherium which grew to the size of a modern elephant.
Like other giant creatures that disappeared at the end of the Pleistocene
period (about 10,000 years ago), Megatherium, and its smaller sloth cousin,
Mylodon, are extinct. Only the small tree sloth survives today. Or so scientists
believe.
In the 1890's an Argentinean explorer, geographer and adventurer, Ramon Lista,
was hunting in a portion of his country known as Patagonia when a large,
unknown creature covered with long hair, trotted past the party. To Lista the
creature looked like a gigantic armadillo. The party shot at the beast, but
the bullets seemed to have no effect.
Professor Florentino Ameghino, a paleontologist in Argentina, heard the Lista
story and began to wonder if the strange beast was a giant sloth that had
survived from the Pleistocene. He might not have put much stock in the Lista
story if it had not been for legends he'd collected from Indians in the
Patagonia region about hunting such a large creature in ancient times. The
animal in the Indian stories was nocturnal, and slept during the day in
burrows it dug with it's claws. The Indians found it difficult to get their
arrows to penetrate the animal's skin.
Ameghino also had a piece of physical evidence. A small section of apparently
fresh hide found by a rancher named Eberhardt on his property in a cave in
1895.The hide was studded with small, hard, calcium nodules and would have
been impervious to the teeth of Pleistoncene predators. It seemed likely that
it would have also resisted Indian arrows and Lista's bullets.
So sure was Ameghino this was the creature Lista had seen he named the creature
after Lista: Nemoylodon listai, or "Lista's new Mylodon."
Expeditions to Eberhardt's and other caves, recovered additional pieces of
hide along with evidence the Eberhardt's cave had been home to both men and
Mylodon. With the development of the Carbon-14 dating method in the twentieth
century the age of Mylodon remains in the Eberhardt's cave was settled. Dung
found in the cave was more than 10,000 years old. The skin was estimated to
be 5,000 years old. Conditions in the caves may have preserved it making it
look fresh to the eye and fooling Ameghino.
No additional evidence has turned up that the giant sloth survives today.
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