These tunnels were dug by a Giant Ground Sloth that lived 10.000 years ago in Brazil...
The third photo are the claw marks... OMG!
These tunnels were once believed to hide religious fortunes deep in their chambers…
But the real treasure is found in who – or what – created them.
The mysterious diggers were giant ground sloths, described in one paper as "a hamster the size of an elephant."
They grew up to 4m long and walked on all fours, although research suggests some could stand and move bipedally.
The original earth benders… SECRET TUNNELS… SECRET TUNNELS…
Almost 100 different species of sloths roamed the Americas between 15 million to 10,000 years ago…
Alongside car-sized giant armadillos that also dug long tunnels through rocks in Brazil.
The claw marks… TERRIFYING!
In the last 15 years, more than 1,500 TUNNELS have been recorded in southern and south-eastern Brazil…
WORLD-RECORD of having the highest concentration of megafauna paleoburrows in the world… Something you can be proud of…
Everytime I see a giant sloth I think of this scene from FUTURAMA…
Nobody knows for sure why the south of Brazil has so MANY OF THESE PALEOTUNNELS.
Most are in the states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul.
Minas Gerais, another southern state, boasts some remarkable examples, including a 340m-long paleoburrow and a collection of six 40m-long tunnels that lead to 10m-wide by 4m-high chambers.
Kind of crazy that it was 10,000 years ago that creature lived on earth, at first sight I would have thought millions of years ago…
Anyway, I have no problem believing that an animal that could weigh up to four tons could create something like that!
More about this giant sloth:
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Manuel
Has anyone heard of the "Universe 25" experiments? Apparently, we've been living in it for approx 40 to 50 years. The first test ended in 1973.
During our homeschooling days, we had a National Geographic book about giant mammals from the past. My daughter loved the giant ground sloth from that book and even more so when we visited a museum that had a fossilized skeleton of a sloth discovered in the Daytona Beach shell pit just 3 miles from the museum. She named him "Handsome." (I know - my kids are weird!)
https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/opinion/columns/2020/10/15/fossilized-bones-giant-ground-sloth-were-found/5965421002/
My favorite giant mammals were the Moropus (related to horses but had claws instead of hooves) and Baluchitherium (related to rhinos and was the largest land mammal that ever lived.)