I love all of the assumptions and creative drawings. With no verifiable transitional fossils found yet, it's sad that some people still believe in Evolution.
To be a human hunting a megatherium or to see one would be insane. The people in Columbia that made the cave painting of giant sloths had something we never will
Really, it is such a shame there are no giant ground sloths around today... I'd also really like to see a quetzalcoatlus and so many other extinct animals, preferrably at a distance tho.
5:48 I WISH that the new world megafauna were still around. It would’ve been so cool for these guys to survive. We could’ve had safaris in North America. It would’ve been awesome!
Cenozoic South America has some of the most fascinating animals in earth's history. I really hope one day we will have a full-on documentary or animated film that take place there.
Very interesting video! If I may I'd like to make some corrections: -The megatheriid and mylodontid giant sloths were not knuckle walkers. As Richard Owen pointed out in his descriptions of Megatherium and Glossotherium, the metacarpals and phalanges (hand bones) were of inequal lengths (not homogeneous as in real knuckle walkers such as chimps or chalicotheres), so they walked with the hand (and feet) palms turned inwards, facing each other, and the weight was borne on the outer bones of their hands (metacarpals IV and V). -The correct fmily name is Scelidotheriidae, instead of Sceledotheriidae.
@@KeichousaurusHui Hello. As the other giant sloths with similar skeletal anatomy, it probably walked mostly on all fours, with hand palms and feet soles turned inwards, but could also stood and walk on the hind legs (there are fossilized trackways at Pehuen-Có in Argentina showing this), for defense (as the living anteaters also do) or to reach tree branches.
We have since built museums to celebrate the past, and spend decades studying prehistoric lives. And if all this has taught us anything, it is this: no species lasts forever. -Kenneth Branagh
But in this case, a very large number of known ground sloth species would probably be with us today if not for humans, especially considering that virtually all of them were better-suited for a warmer global climate.
I think this comment is a bit disingenuous in that humans have and continue to cause massive extinctions. It's not just a natural cycle in which animals are slowly outcompeted by better equipped rivals, and more like entire ecosystems and the entire plant being altered by ONE species in a way that has never occurred in natural history.
@@macc.1132 Especially since animals being outcompeted by other groups of animals, at least at the level of entire lineages, is actually very rare (most supposed case studies are poorly supported or even contradicted by the timeline of the fossil record). Humans are unusual like that.
Man imagine seeing a living giant ground sloth!? I so wish I could see one alive. Same with the giant short faced bears. There was such amazing awe inspiring creatures alive during this era. Like moa birds, the Haast's Eagle 🦅, elephant birds.
Your videos are amazing and very detailed. I enjoy them immensely. Just the pronunciation of some of those species names would throw 50% of people for a loop. Everything rolls smoothly off your tongue. Wonderful to listen to.
Ground sloths appear to walk on the sides of their rear feet. Turn them upside down and it’s not hard to imagine them hanging from all fours just like tree sloths. Of course their weight would keep them from arboreality but I totally believe ground sloths evolved from tree sloths.
Wow, I thought all extant sloths were closely related. Never knew they’re just a staggering case of convergent evolution between 2 completely different sloth lines. It’s very rare and impressive for such a lineage of animals to succeed using the same strategy for such a long time, even into the present day.
A phylogenetic cladogram that includes sloths can be found at ReptileEvolution. Sloths and glyptodonts arose from Barylambda. All other edentates are miniature descendants of these two clades.
If we take into consideration that earth had trees that were thousands of years old and stood as tall as mountains then we may not believe in a “ground” sloth anymore. 🤷♀️
Too bad none of the giant ground sloth such as the mylodon or the megatherium didn't survive to this day, wounder how "fast" they were, could've made for decent mounts to ride on.
Within the superfamily Megatherioidea, Megatheriidae is more closely related to Bradypodidae than to Nothrotheriidae, in fact Megalonychidae is the sister to the Megatheriidae + Bradypodidae clade to the exclusion of Nothrotheriidae, making Nothrotheriidae the most basal within Megatherioidea, the sister superfamily to Megatherioidea is Mylodontoidea which also includes four families, Nematheriidae, Scelidotheriidae, Mylodontidae, and Choloepodidae, Scelidotheriidae is the sister to the Mylodontidae + Choloepodidae clade to the exclusion of Nematheriidae, the most basal superfamily of sloths known was Megalocnoidea which contains four families, Megalocnidae, Catonychidae, Chubutheriidae, and Orophodontidae, while sloths as a whole are a monophyletic group, which is the suborder Folivora, ground sloths are a paraphyletic group as tree sloths descended from ground sloths, thus making some ground sloth families more closely related to tree sloths than to other ground sloths, while tree sloths are a polyphyletic group as the three-toed sloths and two-toed sloths evolved similar lifestyle independently and descended from different lineages of ground sloths, three-toed sloths belong to the superfamily Megatherioidea while two-toed sloths belong to the superfamily Mylodontoidea.
The sloths are the most slowest animals in the world. They spend most of their time in the trees. But they had the ancestors who spend their time on the ground and lived millions of years ago.
The difference between sloths and sloths and dogs and bears in 50 million years Is totally different, Evolution Is random and some animals change faster than others depending by how they live, Sharks and Crocodiles are older than 50 million years and basically the same while a sloth evolved in 2 species, you cant compare animals evolution.
