#Giant Sloths

[lindahall]

Joseph Leidy – Scientist of the Day

Joseph Leidy, the first great paleontologist of the United States, was born on Sep. 9, 1823. He was a Philadelphian and was associated with the Academy of...

learn more

[drakkonyan]

Slouthier and Louwzira, the slow metabolism pokemon inspired by the fact that sloths have a body temperature that would be concidered fatal in most mammals and regulate their temperature in the way cold blooded animals tend to do, giant sloths and godzilla ice dragon on both, just read the fact and made em, and since lux_the_guy over discord gifted me a sick af drawing of louwzira, i decided to render em

the green accents are a reference to avocados and how they were eated mainly by giant sloths before humans started harvesting em

[fun-geography-facts]

Brazil 🇧🇷

In 2009, while traversing through a cornfield, a Brazilian farmer was driving his tractor when it suddenly shuddered, and got stuck in a small hole in the ground. Thinking it was a simple mud puddle, the farmer climbed through the door to push the vehicle out, and to his amazement, uncovered a 10000 year old cave system most likely made by the now extinct Giant Sloth!

The south of Brazil in particular has dozens of these things, and nobody seems to know why or how this creature dug such elaborate tunnel systems. Giant sloths likely looked quite different to their stinky, cute, slow extanct cousins we are familiar with, with some evidence to suggest a degree of bipedalism present in the gentle giants.

Some scientists speculate they were about the size of elephants!

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

Result from the Pleistocene Cuba #paleostream! SO many cool creatures from here, and we JUST missed them, mostly because well, ourselves

Here the labeled version. This one was rather easy to research because i already ad done most of the research for a island size chart years ago.

This one. The only overhaul that was really needed was Antigone cubensis, the flightless crane, for which it is really hard to come by the original description.

Thankfully @albertonykus was able to provide and another friend quickly made this graphic showing some of the proportional differences between it ant its modern relatives.

[amnhnyc]

Party like a ground sloth, because it’s Fossil Friday! This image, snapped circa 1957 depicts giant sloths on display in the Museum. During the Pleistocene, a wide array of ground sloths lumbered across North and South America. Some, like the island-dwelling Megalocnus rodens, evolved to be long-distance swimmers. Others, like the mighty Megatherium, were among the largest land mammals to ever live. The biggest ground sloths could have weighed up to 8,800 lbs (4,000 kg)—the size of an elephant! Most of these mammals died out at the end of the Pleistocene. There is also evidence that ground sloths and early humans used the same caves, but not necessarily at the same time.

See giant ground sloths and more on the Museum's fourth floor! We're open daily from 10 am–5 pm. Plan your visit.

Photo: Image no. 324981 / © AMNH Library

[reddpenn]

I got a Geiger counter!

Let’s look through my collection for some Spicy Rocks!  I’ve never deliberately collected radioactive specimens, so I have no idea what I’m going to find.

First, though, let’s test the baseline level of radiation in my house.

It’s fun to hear the Geiger counter click as it detects radiation.  20 counts per minute.  Nice!  You’re unlikely to ever see a count of zero, as pretty much everything in the world, including the human body, gives off a little bit of radiation. 

20 is a normal baseline, nothing to be concerned about.  Standing in my house, I’m getting a radiation dose of about 0.00013 milliseieverts per hour - or a little over one mSv a year.  This is an average yearly dosage of radiation for people in my country, and is something my body can easily process.  For context, a dosage of 100 mSv would slightly increase my risk of cancer, and a dosage of 1000 mSv would immediately give me radiation sickness.

But enough about these boring, safe amounts of radiation.  I want to see some spice!  Let’s check over by the Rock Wall!

Hm, I’d expected the CPM to be noticeably higher around my rock collection, but I’m getting nothing!  Even testing each individual rock, nothing’s more than a few ticks above the baseline.  So far, my fancy new toy is looking like wasted money.  :c

WAIT!  THERE!!  62 CPM!  That’s three times higher than the base reading in the rest of my house!!!  YESSS!!  THIS ROCK IS SPICY!!!!

Here’s the rock that’s setting off my Geiger counter.  (Yes I’m touching the spicy rock with my bare hands, don’t worry about it.) 

This fossil, which is as big as my head, is part of the femur bone of a Megalonyx, a North American giant ground sloth!

These huge animals could grow as big as ten feet tall.  They lived alongside humans during the last ice age, and it’s theorized that humans may have hunted them to extinction.  This particular fossil was found in a phosphate mine!

Why is it radioactive?  Because... sometimes fossils are just radioactive!  They spend a lot of time in the ground, which is full of radioactive minerals, and often radiation just gets all up in there.  There are some fossils on display in museums which are so radioactive that they have to be coated with lead paint for the safety of curators and museum-goers!  Compared to those, this femur bone is barely radioactive at all.

So is it really safe for me to have this in my house, much less handle it with my bare hands?  Well, yeah!  Remember, despite having this spicy rock in my collection, the radiation baseline in my house is completely normal.  Here’s why.

Even just a few centimeters away from this specimen, the Geiger counter’s reading is halved.  A few inches away, and it can’t detect any radiation at all.  It basically has to be directly touching the rock to get an abnormal reading.  Which means I also have to be touching the rock to receive a meaningful amount of radiation exposure.

But even holding this rock in my hands, I’m only getting a dosage of about 0.0004 mSv per hour.  If I never let go of this rock for an entire year, I would get a dose of about 3.5 mSv.  Which is... still completely within the safe threshold for my body to process.  Nothing to worry about!

Man, I gotta start collecting some spicier rocks.

[atarial]

finished updating my old bears picture!

the panda and polar bear are completely redrawn, the brown bear has a new face, and it's all just had a go over and touch up

[rwby-encrusted-blog]

Rusted Knight Nora: Something like the Thunder Barbian or Lighting Stirker. Imagine the Emotional Trauma Ren is in.

Thunderless Tempest: *Slides off of a Megatherium*

Weiss: That's the Thundering Tempest. It's the Thundering Tempest. That's it. I've officially gone- *Locked in a bone crushing hug* HRRG-

Thunderless Tempest: *Wheezing, crackling, croaking sobs*

Blake: *Caught in the hug* Woah- Hey- You alright?

Yang: Geez! No one's hugged me this hard since 'sides my dad And-

Yang: Oh ...

Ren: Oh?

Thunderless Tempest: *Sets them all down gently, hooks her fingers under her studded leather helm*

Nora: *Teary eyed and making odd, strained noises*

RWBYR: *Shocked step back*

Ren: Nora ... *Rushing up to her, cupping her face* Nora what happened? Why- When-

Nora: *Rubs her throat as she lifts her chin, revealing nasty scars that stretch beneath her collar*

Ruby: Do- Do you know how long you've been here?

Nora: *Shakes head*

Blake: I- do you still remember how to write?

Nora: *So-So hand gesture*

Ruby: I- It'll have to do for now, is there anywhere safe you can take us to?

Nora: *Nods Rapidly*

Weiss: Okay, okay- I hope the Cat's ok-

Nora: *Slams Hammer, growl with stutter, scanning the area in ... Fear? Anger?*

Ren: noRA-

Nora: *PAuses at Ren's voice, nabs Weiss's scroll*

Weiss's Scroll: Cat bad. Long Story. Why Mute. Follow.

Ren: Okay. We'll follow you.

RWBY: *Looks at each other*

Nora: *Starts leaving, hoping on the back of her Megatherium, holding a hand out to RWBY*

Ren: Well? Come on!

[shirecorn]

Ko-fi Creature Commission - Horseshoe Crab + Giant Ground Sloth

[inbarfink]

[c-rowlesdraws]

eating an avocado with an air of wistful melancholy because I’m thinking about how much I wish the giant ground sloths were still here

[cryptid-quest]

Cryptid of the Day: Ware Giant Sloth

Description: In 2011, an anonymous man claimed to have seen a giant sloth near Ware County, Georgia. Though the large creature reminded the witness of a bear, he insisted it wasn’t, and reminded him of the cryptid Mapinguari, another giant sloth-like cryptid 

[alex-fictus]

Giant ground sloth for a suggestion! <3

I have Megalonyx!! I’ve been meaning to give them an edit, I feel like I could better capture their face in my style now :D (they were in Batch 1, I’ve been updating some of these designs as needed)

Megatherium and Thalassocnus are both in my queue too, but lemme know if there’s any other specifics!

[polymorphiczooid]

I was asked to do some "cave paintings" for a book - they only needed black and white images, but I made some color versions for myself.

[fatehbaz]

thinking about "the Great Beast".

thinking about the superlatively unique and loveable creature, the tapir.

thinking about European colonial agents being perplexed and bedazzled upon first encountering the "forest cow" and the "elephant of the New World".

thinking about how an incredible extinct megafauna icon, the giant ground sloth, got its name (and became a central character in popular and professional discussions of paleontology and "extinction").

thinking about bulletproof moose.

thinking about eighteenth-century apothecary remedies.

thinking about how an animal name traveled from the Sahara in North Africa, through Arabic into Spain, to boreal forests of northern Eurasia, across the Caribbean and South America to describe "the beaste in which nature hath endeavoured to shewe her cunnyng".