🔥 What was Megatherium? | Natural History Museum

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Their hind foot structure and posture of the ground sloths also helped it with meal time. They likely relied on their robust hind feet, in combination with a stout tail, to support their massive bodies when rearing on their hindquarters to reach high into trees for forage, Wilkins explained. Many of their extinct relatives were much larger and lived on the ground. Later, Jefferson was credited with discovering the extinct sloth, which was named Megalonyx jeffersonii. Some argue that they were around for many more thousands of years , though, surviving on islands in the Caribbean. Megalonyx fossils have been recovered from about sites across North America, according to the Illinois State Museum. Megalonyx sloths grew to around 9. These sloths are small-bodied and weigh less than 20 pounds. Some have been found as far north as Alaska and the Northwest Territories of Canada.

Giant ground sloths were large, lumbering beasts that lived in the Americas during the Ice Age. They were directly related to today's modern sloths. By the end of giant ground sloth Great Ice Age, around 11, years ago, many believe that the giant ground sloths had become extinct.

Giant ground sloths preferred forests along rivers or lakes, but they also lived during the Pleistocene period, also known as the Great Ice Age. Giant ground sloth first thought the bones belonged to giant ground sloth large lion and called it the "Great Claw," or Megalonyx, according to the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia.

The giant ground sloth was an herbivore and preferred living in forests along rivers or lakes.

They were also distantly related to anteaters and armadillos. The future third president had a well-known interest in fossils, and a friend had sent him some bones that had been found in a cave in West Virginia. Megalonyx jeffersonii was the largest of the ground sloths in family Megalonychidae, reaching the size of an ox when fully grown, said Ken Wilkins, an associate dean for sciences and professor of biology at Baylor University. This made for a very cold environment that few animals could endure. Live Science. One species of ground sloth is named after Thomas Jefferson. The six modern species of sloths are all arboreal, so they are called tree sloths. At its peak, as much as 30 percent of the Earth's surface was covered by glaciers and parts of the northern oceans were frozen, according to the San Diego Natural History Museum. Please deactivate your ad blocker in order to see our subscription offer. Giant ground sloths evolved in South America around 35 million years ago. Because of this, they are referred to as ground sloths. In , as he was preparing a paper on the find for the American Philosophical Society, he saw an engraving of a sloth skeleton and realized that his fossil was similar and that his classification was wrong. Ground sloths were herbivores, meaning they ate vegetation. Their peg-like teeth were ideal for this diet, but they also had other body parts that played a large part in their meals.