Image courtesy of Mauricio Anton/Science Photo Library.
Joel Kontinen
Today, there are
six species of sloths, all of which have similar ecologies such as arboreality
and a slow metabolism. These species are a tiny remnant of a once diverse
American clade that was mostly made up of large-bodied species. Some scientists
think that across the evolutionary history of sloths the ancestral groups were
terrestrial and large, with smaller species being derived and convergent.
According to evolution, for 30 million years, the sloth family diversified across the Americas, from a species as large as an elephant to one that was entirely aquatic. Unfortunately, like most other large Pleistocene herbivores, the clade was almost entirely eradicated by newly arriving humans.
Sacha Vignieri, 2025 In Science Journals | Science 23 May
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