Mega-Tunnels Dug by South American Megafauna | Hacker News Reader

Mega-Tunnels Dug by South American Megafauna

blogs.discovermagazine.com

209 pointscurtis29 comments

For those still curious, a "modern" fruit that we can eat thanks to these mega diggers: http://www.kew.org/blogs/archived-blogs/taste-amazon

Spoiler: it's delicious, thanks megafauna! :-)

A more common example: the avocado.

This is all I remember from my Stanford intro to humanities "World History of Science" lecture.

We'll, this and "witch's milk"..

Robert Proctor is a legend.

Mangos too!

mmmh... aestivation?

Is it just me or do none of the photos on that page load?

None of the photos on that page load.

The wikipedia page on Megatherium, the giant ground sloth, doesn't mention paleoburrows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatherium

Anyone have an info on whether other experts take this hypothesis seriously?

The impression that I got from the article is that we don't know yet, because the experts have not heard of this before either. It sounds like scientific study only goes back maybe a decade, it's been largely confined to Brazil, and the scientists involved are geologists, not paleobiologists. So is it for real? It sounds both crazy and plausible to me at the same time. I think it's too soon for us laypeople to draw any conclusions.

I'm reasonably certain this is not an April Fool's joke. Here's an article in a Brazilian newspaper from 2015 (via Google Translate): https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&u=http://...

Thanks - it's hard to be on alert when it's the 2nd here. I hope it isn't a joke.

If it's not in wikipedia it does not mean it does not exist.

When was last time a natural structure this big had not been formally studied?

Paleoburrows do not even have a wikipedia entry. I suspect that's not going to last long after this article.

Oh god. I remember hearing some years ago about the ancient ancestors of guinea pigs... bison-sized, roaming in packs. Looking at the claw-marks, clearly from a far more enormous sloth, really puts the relatively puny Guineazilla into perspective.

This story on April 1st make me nervous, but looks legit and so amazing.

The date on the article is Mar 28th

Ground Sloths? I think you mean Badgermoles.

Something something secret tunnel.

I wonder how we could differenciate among old claw and old pick-axe marks. Both could be very similar.

There is a simple solution to explore this idea further. Is the hardness of this rock bigger than keratine or enamel?.

this link is redirecting to a spam advertising page after it finishes loading. anyone else seeing this?

Yes, I tried reading the first sentence twice. Both times I won $1000 and then have up.

Edit: happened on iPhone

Same here, on an iPhone

I didn't see that, even on MS Edge with no adblockers. Malicious extensions or malware maybe?

That's what I was afraid of too. I tried a few other pages, even others on discovery magazine site, and only see the problem with this article. I'm on a Pixel in a Chrome incognito tab when it happens.

Well that's pretty weird. I tried it on a Chrome Incognito tab on my Nexus 5X, and that worked fine too.

I got this too, and I've gotten it on other websites that are very popular. I can't imagine that any of these sites would intentionally host an advertisement that would make it unreadable.

The solution is to delete Safari's history and cookies. Alternatively you can use private browsing.

No, it works fine here.

The site is non-https which allows for an internet provider to manipulate the page too. :(

Same here, with chrome / Android

No problems chrome / Android here

It happens to me, even in read mode. Hitting back just stalls.

Fake Facebook styling is sketchy.

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