Laura Geggel, Staff Writer | September 10, 2014 07:06am ET
An ancient sloth weighing some 5 tons and sporting
claws that extended a foot (0.3 meters) is helping to reveal how the slow, furry creatures ballooned in size long ago at a startlingly fast rate, a new study finds.
claws that extended a foot (0.3 meters) is helping to reveal how the slow, furry creatures ballooned in size long ago at a startlingly fast rate, a new study finds.
The massive beast, Eremotherium eomigrans, along with all of the sloth's giant predecessors, went extinct by about 11,000 years ago.
The new study found that some sloth lineages grew more than 220 pounds (100 kilograms) every million years — one of the fastest body growth rates known in the evolution of mammals. The rapid growth rate indicates that several factors in prehistoric times, such as environmental conditions or competition with other animals, may have favored large sloths, the researchers said in a statement.
conditions or competition with other animals, may have favored large sloths, the researchers said in a statement. 
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