Comments on: How do you explain the bone arrangement? Part 2

By: David

David — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:02:08 +0000

Pete, good idea but it’s too large. A newborn Megalonyx is only about as big as a beagle, not the baby elephant-sized animal you would expect. (Yea, I was surprised too. ) We’re guessing the “baby” was about 90#, comparing the scapulae. It’s an awfully rough guess but it’s a lot bigger than a beagle.

By: Pete Eyheralde

Pete Eyheralde — Fri, 23 May 2008 03:09:08 +0000

Just an off the wall idea… but has anybody considered the possibility that the baby scapula was from a sloth fetus? Maybe it was in the mother when she died.

By: David

David — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:51:24 +0000

Terrific ideas Don. Meghann is pulling together a global map for us showing the location of all the bones. We’ll certainly post it when she’s done. Bob and Sonia found all the original bones underwater in the bed of the creek, arranged as in the photo we posted. We didn’t start digging on the north bank until excavations failed to uncover any more bones in the water. The 1993 flood certainly transported some bone, but it didn’t move the ones in the photo–they were all securely locked in the clay. Something else moved them 10,000 years ago. We’ve started a skeleton map too, but it’s slow going due to some uncertainty about sloth anatomy, especially re. hand/wrist. That happens when no one has a complete sloth skeleton to reference. Greg McDonald will be able to fill in the blanks when he does the osteology in the fall. Your point about left versus right raises an interesting issue: our impression is we have a lot more of the left side than right. You gotta wonder why. I’ll probably write more about it later.

By: Don Johnson

Don Johnson — Tue, 20 May 2008 17:03:01 +0000

To help figure out the best place(s) to expand the dig site with the hope of recovering more of the sloth skeletons, it would be a big help to have a detailed map of the bones discovered to date from all three individual sloths. Such a map should show the original location of the creek banks (before excavation began) with the hope it would give some indication of how much of the skeleton(s) might have already washed away when the creek cut through the Ice Age sediments. Do we know the location (or at least which bank) where the original bones were discovered by the land owners? If so, those bones could be tentatively added to such a map. Labels for each bone indicating whether it came from the left or right side of the skeleton would be helpful. Sometimes seeing the global picture presented by such a map can let you see patterns that you otherwise wouldn’t notice. Also, skeletal diagrams with recovered bones colored in would be helpful in this discussion. Could digital versions of available bone maps be added to this blog??? I understand that it may be premature if the information hasn’t yet been published.