Giant sloth bone pendants suggest humans were in Americas earlier than thought

cnn.com

45 points·Qem··7 comments

Full article: Evidence of artefacts made of giant sloth bones in central Brazil around the last glacial maximum - https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2023...

I hope at least a few of those paleoindian megafauna bone artifacts were brought high into the Andes, were low temperatures could preserve DNA, so they may help future de-extinction efforts upon discovery. I did a cursory search about the status of giant sloth genome sequencing, but unfortunately it appears the only information recovered was on mitochondrial DNA[1], despite some sites on Patagonia containing even well preserved samples of hide[2].

[1]. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221...

[2]. https://www.reddit.com/r/Naturewasmetal/comments/h0mekl/pres...

I wonder how close you could get by just making three-fingered sloths really big.

I fail to understand the fascination with de extinction. Like what, you want giant sloth pets in Texas? We seem to have trouble keeping the species we have today from going extinct.

> Like what, you want giant sloth pets in Texas?

Is that so much to ask for?

It’s not like it’s going to run loose in San Diego eating people.

A giant sloth escaping would be roughly equivalent to a moose or elephant escaping. They are very large and could be quite destructive before capture or killing.

I'm totally for keeping the species we have today from going extinct. But the world has a lot of people and they can do a lot of things at the same time. If in addition to stopping damaging ecosystems, we are able to repair some of the damage we've already done, that would be great.

I enjoyed learning about the Cerutti site recently

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerutti_Mastodon_site

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