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Mega-Tunnels Dug by South American Megafauna
- M_Grey 10y agoOh god. I remember hearing some years ago about the ancient ancestors of guinea pigs... bison-sized, roaming in packs. Looking at the claw-marks, clearly from a far more enormous sloth, really puts the relatively puny Guineazilla into perspective.
- caio1982 10y agoFor those still curious, a "modern" fruit that we can eat thanks to these mega diggers: http://www.kew.org/blogs/archived-blogs/taste-amazon http://www.kew.org/blogs/archived-blogs/taste-amazon Spoiler: it's delicious, thanks megafauna! :-)
- user982 10y agoA more common example: the avocado.
- zafka 10y agoMangos too!
- pvaldes 10y agommmh... aestivation?
- mfrykman 10y agoThis is all I remember from my Stanford intro to humanities "World History of Science" lecture. We'll, this and "witch's milk".. Robert Proctor is a legend.
- mfrykman 10y agoThis is all I remember from my Stanford intro to humanities "World History of Science" lecture. We'll, this and "witch's milk".. Robert Proctor is a legend.
- markdown 10y agoIs it just me or do none of the photos on that page load?
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoNone of the photos on that page load.
- heh 10y agoGround Sloths? I think you mean Badgermoles. Something something secret tunnel.
- jessriedel 10y agoThe wikipedia page on Megatherium, the giant ground sloth, doesn't mention paleoburrows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatherium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatherium Anyone have an info on whether other experts take this hypothesis seriously?
- curtis 10y agoThe impression that I got from the article is that we don't know yet, because the experts have not heard of this before either. It sounds like scientific study only goes back maybe a decade, it's been largely confined to Brazil, and the scientists involved are geologists, not paleobiologists. So is it for real? It sounds both crazy and plausible to me at the same time. I think it's too soon for us laypeople to draw any conclusions. I'm reasonably certain this is not an April Fool's joke. Here's an article in a Brazilian newspaper from 2015 (via Google Translate): https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&u=http://oglobo.globo.com/sociedade/caverna-escavada-por-mamiferos-gigantes-descoberta-na-amazonia-17032201&prev=search https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&u=http://...
- lostlogin 10y agoThanks - it's hard to be on alert when it's the 2nd here. I hope it isn't a joke.
- fsloth 10y agoIf it's not in wikipedia it does not mean it does not exist.
- WhitneyLand 10y agoWhen was last time a natural structure this big had not been formally studied? Paleoburrows do not even have a wikipedia entry. I suspect that's not going to last long after this article.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- inversezero 10y agothis link is redirecting to a spam advertising page after it finishes loading. anyone else seeing this?
- ajmurmann 10y agoYes, I tried reading the first sentence twice. Both times I won $1000 and then have up. Edit: happened on iPhone
- saltyhiker 10y agoSame here, on an iPhone
- ufmace 10y agoI didn't see that, even on MS Edge with no adblockers. Malicious extensions or malware maybe?
- inversezero 10y agoThat's what I was afraid of too. I tried a few other pages, even others on discovery magazine site, and only see the problem with this article. I'm on a Pixel in a Chrome incognito tab when it happens.
- ufmace 10y agoWell that's pretty weird. I tried it on a Chrome Incognito tab on my Nexus 5X, and that worked fine too.
- dharbin 10y agoI got this too, and I've gotten it on other websites that are very popular. I can't imagine that any of these sites would intentionally host an advertisement that would make it unreadable. The solution is to delete Safari's history and cookies. Alternatively you can use private browsing.
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- bwb 10y agoThis story on April 1st make me nervous, but looks legit and so amazing.
- tim333 10y agoThe date on the article is Mar 28th
- pvaldes 10y agoI wonder how we could differenciate among old claw and old pick-axe marks. Both could be very similar.
- pvaldes 10y agoThere is a simple solution to explore this idea further. Is the hardness of this rock bigger than keratine or enamel?.