Four-ton mega-sloths with flesh-rending claws ‘lived alongside humans for 10,000 years…& we used their bones as jewels’
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FOUR-ton mega-sloths with flesh-rendering claws lived alongside humans for 10,000 years, new research has found. The 20ft tall meat eating beasts were thought to have been wiped out quickly when humans made it to the Americas. But new research has found the sloth's bones had been turned into jewellery by humans that lived alongside them 27,000 years ago.
![[Humans are now thought to have lived alongside the giant sloths for 10,000 years]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/illustration-provided-researchers-depicts-person-958631103.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
One penny-sized sloth fossil appears to be deliberately polished and has a hole at one end. It's one of a number similar artefacts discovered in Santa Elina, modern-day Brazil, that are roughly 27,000 years old. That's a whopping 10,000 years earlier than humans were thought to have first arrived in the Americas.
![[Giant sloths could have lived alongside humans in what is now Brazil]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/illustration-depicts-giant-sloths-humans-958631389.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
That means humans would have lived alongside the giant sloths, as well as other massive animals like mastodons, sabre-toothed tigers, and dire wolves, for thousands of years. Giant sloths once lived from Alaska to Argentina and some species had bony structures on their backs – a bit like the plates of modern armadillos – that may have been used to make decorations.
Originally researchers wondered if the craftsmen were working on already old fossils. But University of Sao Paulo researcher Mírian Pacheco found ancient people were carving “fresh bones” shortly after the animals died. She said: "We believe it was intentionally altered and used by ancient people as jewelry or adornment.".
![[Modified bones hint that humans arrived in the Americas much earlier than what was thought]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024-saying-unlike-specimens-surface-958630946.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
