The giant ground sloth was given its scientific name Megalonyx jeffersonii by the US’s third president and founding father ...

Manatee County utility crews unearthed a piece of history, dating back thousands of years, while digging a trench for a ...

A Manatee County utilities crew was surprised to find a giant ground sloth fossil while digging a trench for a water line.

For a long time, scientists believed the first humans to arrive in the Americas soon killed off these giant ground sloths through hunting, along with many other massive animals like mastodons ...

Larger sloths weren’t restricted to pre-existing caves. Using claws that are among the largest of any known mammal, living or extinct, they could carve their own from bare earth and rock.

This illustration depicts giant sloths, humans and mastodons living alongside one another in central Brazil 27,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene period. Peter Hamlin / AP ...

“We know we’ve found Giant Ground Sloth by its distinctive tooth,” said Chris Ringstaff, project planner with TxDOT’s environmental affairs division. “We’re here to get the road built.

SAO PAULO (AP) — Sloths weren’t always slow-moving, furry tree-dwellers. Their prehistoric ancestors were huge — up to 4 tons — and when startled, they brandished immense claws.