While Searching A Deep Sinkhole In Belize, Divers Recovered The Fossils Of An Ancient Giant Sloth That Weighed About 14,400 Pounds
While divers were searching for Maya artifacts in 2014, they came across the remains of an ancient giant sloth in a deep sinkhole in Cara Blanca, Belize.
They managed to retrieve fossils of the creature’s humerus, femur, and tooth from the sinkhole.
Researchers studied the tooth to figure out details about the now-extinct sloth’s diet, death, and environment. They wanted to learn more about how prehistoric megafauna disappeared.
Giant sloth teeth can be tough to analyze because they are often fossilized, meaning that much of the original bone and tissue has been replaced by minerals.
This particular tooth also did not have any enamel that the scientists could use to learn about the sloth’s diet.
So, they had to turn to a new technique to investigate the four-inch tooth fragment. They extracted 20 samples from a dense type of tissue called orthodentin, which was largely intact in the sloth tooth.
The sloth is believed to have been 13 feet tall, up to 20 feet long, and weighed around 14,400 pounds. The fossils were about 27,000 years old. Their age gave the researchers a clue regarding its habitat.
Today, the region of central Belize where the sloth was found is covered with dense tropical forests. At the time that the sloth was alive, the area was an open savanna.
After analyzing stable carbon and oxygen isotopes in the dental tissue, the researchers determined that the sloth had been eating an assortment of vegetation in the last year of its life. Back then, the climate was fluctuating between short, wet periods to long, dry periods.
Kevin – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
“We were able to see that this huge, social creature was able to adapt rather readily to the dry climate, shifting its sustenance to relying upon what was more available or palatable,” Jean Larmon, the lead author of the study, said.
The isotopic analysis also showed the researchers how the species became extinct. Although the sloth was able to forage for different types of food, it likely had a hard time finding water.
It lived during the Last Glacial Maximum when large ice sheets formed and lowered global sea levels. The region now known as Belize was cool and dry.
So, the animal may have gone down into the sinkhole in search of water to drink. However, even standing at 13 feet tall, it had gotten trapped in the pool, which is very steep and approximately 200 feet deep.
Other megafauna fossils were scattered around the area, suggesting that they had met their ends in the same way.
Experts don’t know exactly why the ancient giant sloth went extinct, but they don’t think climate change was the only cause.
The arrival of human beings in the region 12,000 to 13,000 years ago may have contributed to its demise.
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