Megatunnel dug by South American Mega Fauna

blogs.discovermagazine.com...

Branching tunnels, some as long as 2000 ft are found in Brasil and other parts of South America. Extinct Giant Sloth and Armadillos have made the tunnels (see picture for claw marks still visible on the tunnel walls) Many generations of animals must have work on a tunnel, But why so huge? For shelter? I can imagine families of giant ground sloths hiding for periods of rain. I dont think they had lots of predators hunting them because of their huge seize. Maybe they just had to dig so their claws stayed at a ideal length.
Or maybe for minerals (geophagy)?
Also is why only (parts) South America? North America was also once home to giant ground sloths and giant armadillos, you won’t find paleoburrows there. Or do we not recognize them as being burrows made by extinct mega fauna?
So many questions...




Source: Discovermagazin

That is fascinating.

Just off the top of my head here, I'm going to say that these burrows were dug to escape climatic anomalies, namely cold temperatures. I would need to cross reference cold periods of Earth history with their timelines to know, but I'm mildly intoxicated and that is not likely to happen in a timely manner.

Regardless, I will need to look into this further.

Nice subject matter OP.

a reply to: ahamarlin

Hey thanks for posting this fascinating article!

Those are bigger than I expected. I don't think I'd want to meet the animals responsible for those..

Might of been "Them"...

a reply to: ahamarlin

I admit i've never really heard of giant sloths before. I read a news article about the tunnel yesterday and dismissed it as possible fake news. So thanks for posting this. I read about giant sloths on Wikapedia and learned a lot.

I was also directed by a google search to an older thread by Slayer69 pondering whether giant sloths still exist. They seem to be only finding these paleoburrows for the first time in the past 2 decades. They say they were dug over 8 thousand years ago but were dug over thousands of years (op article).

I think its possible they could still exist and hide in their burrows. Slayer's thread had some links indicating sightings.

Living Giant Sloths?

I like dragons better. Giant armadillos and Sloths just isn't nearly as impressive.

They can't say dragons because they have denied their existance for a hundred years, it would make them look like idiots.

a reply to: ahamarlin

Reminds me of the movie Tremors

Ok the giant sloth may not be as dead as we think.

www.nytimes.com...

The quote below comes from the New York Times piece linked above.

"Glenn Shepard Jr., an American ethnobiologist and anthropologist based in Manaus, said he was among the skeptics until 1997, when he was doing research about local wildlife among the Machiguenga people of the far western Amazon, in Peru. Tribal members all mentioned a fearsome slothlike creature that inhabited a hilly, forested area in their territory.

Dr. Shepard said “the clincher that really blew me away” came when a member of the tribe remarked matter of factly that he had also seen a mapinguary at the natural history museum in Lima. Dr. Shepard checked; the museum has a diorama with a model of the giant prehistoric ground sloth."

So the Giant Sloth, I propose built these tunnels as a residence and roadway. Given the size of the beast, stealthy travel wasn't really an option through forest so it travelled underground, appearing here and there to hunt prey. We have found, relatively close to habitation only the long abandoned ones, used by generations of Giant Sloths.

Perhaps in the hills of the Western Amazon there is another warren of tunnels / ancient runsin to which the creature slips and hides.

In North America perhaps the creature evolved a different set of behaviours, staying above ground but inhabiting very remote areas such as swamps. There are reports of similar swamp creatures.

Cool original post whatever though.

The north american giant ground sloths "Megalonyx jeffersoni", were first found in a cave in western Virginia by saltpeter miners. and the bones they found were first given to U.S. President Thomas Jefferson.
en.wikipedia.org...

One idea as to the why of them being found underground is they went underground to find salts lacking in there diet.

a reply to: ANNED

Adding this great find to the thread. Crews digging the new LA tunnel just found an ancient Giant Sloth bone.

Pic is at the link
LA tunnel diggers find bone of ancient giant sloth