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Post by another specialist on Apr 14, 2007 14:40:58 GMT
 Eremotherium laurillardi These plant-eating creatures rivaled elephants in size! They stood 6 m (20 ft) tall and weighed several tons. Ground sloths originated in South America and spread northward by drifting on trees and debris to the West Indies and by migrating over the Central American land bridge to North America. www.mnh.si.edu/museum/VirtualTour/Tour/First/IceAge/ice1.html |
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Post by another specialist on Apr 14, 2007 14:42:05 GMT
Knowledge of the morphology and variation in the Megatheriinae is based mainly on the remains of the two Pleistocene giant ground sloths Megatherium americanum Cuvier, 1796 and Eremotherium laurillardi (Lund, 1842 sensu Cartelle and De Iuliis, 1995 nec Guérin and Faure, 2000). The former is known primarily from the Pleistocene of Argentina, but also from several localities in Uruguay and Tarija, Bolivia (De Iuliis, 1996). The latter is known mainly from the Pleistocene-Holocene of Brazil and southeastern USA, as well as several Central American and northern South American countries, such as Panama, El Salvador, Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador (Cartelle, 1992; Cartelle and De Iuliis, 1995; De Iuliis, 1996), and Peru (Pujos, 2002, 2006). www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0002-70142006000100013&lng=pt&nrm=iso&tlng=en |
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Post by RSN on Apr 14, 2007 20:51:33 GMT
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Post by another specialist on Apr 15, 2007 8:11:45 GMT
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Post by another specialist on Apr 15, 2007 8:14:42 GMT
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Post by another specialist on Apr 15, 2007 8:15:59 GMT
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Post by dantheman9758 on Apr 15, 2007 22:10:04 GMT
Anybody know which sloth was bigger, and by how much? I know both the Megatherium, and Eremotherium approached the size of elephants. They were the 2 largest species of ground sloths from what I understand. I cannot find any measurements of both of the animals skeletal lengths (nose to tail), Height at hips, Maximum bipedal height, Shoulder height when walking quadrepedally, or skull lengths. -- I don't like to read estimated weights because scientists are terrible at estimating weight. Even so, anything you guys can find would be helpful, because I am about to reconstruct this animal as my next photoshop.
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Post by sordes on Apr 16, 2007 6:31:13 GMT
Peraps this could be usefull for you: www.angellis.net/Web/PDfiles/edents.pdfThere are at least some lengths of skulls and total lengths, also some weight estimations. But you are right, scientitsts are really often terrible estimating weights. Just look at Thyalcoleo carnifex. Some jerks actually thought it was only about 30kg in weight, but its skull was as large as a lion´s skull, and its bones in comparison even much more robust. In fact newer studies which worked with other parametres came to weights of more than 150kg for the largest known speciemens. Just look at the skeleton of this beasts, they make even Smilodon looking fragile. Or the weight of marine reptiles. There are many people which completely doubt the existence of marine reptiles heavier than 50 tons. The hypothetical 25m Liopleurodon of WWD did never exist, Liopleurodons stayed much smaller, but there were other still unnamed species which actually reached lengths of 20-25m on average. I made really many calculations, comparisons with other animals and comparisons of weight and length at different sizes, and comparisons with the famous Liopleurodon skeleton in our local museum. The result was clear, a 25m pliosaur with a weight of only 50 tons would be ridiculous, it would look like a sausage. Even with very conservative estimations it was really monstrous, far bigger than most sperm whales. In fact my estimated weights were at the end nearly identical with those of the guys which examinded the monster of Aramberri. They used models and look how much water they suppressed, and calculated with this the weight (this was comparably easy, as marine animals tend in general to have a density which is a bit higher than water, but nearly never lesser). |
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Post by dantheman9758 on Apr 16, 2007 21:59:55 GMT
Hey thanks, that's where i got odd toed ungulates, and even toed ungulates .pdfs! --- they helped me out a great deal when i was finding ACTUAL measurements of animals such as euceratherium and cervalces..... I couldnt find a carnivora chart though, you don't happen to have the link to a carnivora .pdf just like that one do you? I'm estimating on a lot on carnivores of the American Pleistocene as well, and again, i don't trust scientific weight estimates. (900 lb lions are a bit suspicious if you ask me)
Although contrary to your perception of scientific estimates about thyalcoleo and liopleurodon, MY experiances have shown me that (for some Pleistocene animals at least) scientists are OVERestimating the weights by a great margin.
Also, that chart seems to list a TON of Eremotherium species... was there really that many of them? I am still trying to put together a large poster of EVERY species of large animal that lived in north america 13,000 years ago and I don't think i could ever fit that many different species of massive Eremotheriums.
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Post by another specialist on Apr 17, 2007 4:28:47 GMT
dantheman9758 nice image and info but could you please keep to the thread category subject as changing the subjects does confuss members and makes more work for us moderators that split threads up as they start to mention more and more species.
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Post by dantheman9758 on Apr 17, 2007 5:12:12 GMT
I always get sidetracked in discussions sorry! I'll remove it myself and start a new thread  |
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Post by another specialist on Apr 17, 2007 5:28:40 GMT
That ok mate no problem.
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Post by sordes on Apr 17, 2007 7:49:09 GMT
Here is such a pdf-list about carnivores: www.angellis.net/Web/PDfiles/carnivs.pdfYou are very right that many animals were much overestimated in size and weight, but there are really cases such as that of Thylacoleo, which shows that some paleontologists have really NO idea about simple mathematics and the anatomy of living animals. I know many cases in which some of them even did not know that weight increases with the cube, and an animal with twice the length will have eight times the weight. Another example would be Diprotodon, it was for a long time estimated to be about one ton in weight, but recent studies showed that it was closer to two tons+. As I made also already really many calculations of the weights of extinct animals, I also know that many paleontologists really don´t care about the comparisons with living animals. |
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Post by another specialist on Apr 17, 2007 13:00:47 GMT
Thanks Sordes for the pdf files very interesting.
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Post by another specialist on Apr 19, 2007 7:14:35 GMT
Some remains of a very small megatheriid have been uncovered in the Upper Pleistocene/Lower Holocene deposits of the Lagoa da Pedra at Conceição das Creoulas (Salgueiro, Pernambuco, Brazil). Among the remains are an adult maxillary with four molariforms, four isolated adult and four extremely juvenile isolated teeth. This material is identical to that found by P.W. Lund at Lagoa Santa in Minas Gerais, later described in 1842 as Megatherium laurillardii, and hence allowing us to allocate the taxon to the genus Eremotherium. Other remains have been found in São Raimundo Nonato Archaeological Area. The new material demonstrates that E. laurillardi is in no way a juvenile of the gigantic Eremotherium species commonly found in the Pleistocene of Intertropical South America, as was frequently thought to be the case. Clearly then, the species name laurillardi cannot be used for the large Eremotherium species whose name must be E. rusconii (SCHAUB, 1935). The real E. laurillardi, sympatric with the large species, with its' remarkable diminutive stature amongst the Pleistocene members of the family, is therefore known from four sites in North-Eastern and South-Eastern Brazil. cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1477431 |
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Post by Carlos on Aug 11, 2007 14:13:51 GMT
Eremotherium laurillardi: the Panamerican Late Pleistocene megatheriid sloth C. Cartell, and G. De Iuliis, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 1995, 15(4):830-841 Remains of Eremotherium, representing a large-sized megatheriid ground sloth, are known from localities in North, Central, and South America. Usually these remains are currently assigned to the following three species, based largely on geographic provenance: E. laurillardi (Lund), E. mirabile (Leidy), and E. rusconii (Schaub). However, two large, recently recovered collections of Eremotherium remains from Jacobina, Bahia, Brazil, and Daytona Beach, Florida, USA, do not support the separation of these species. Instead, these collections demonstrate the existence of a single Pan-american species. The range of variation is larger than was suspected and the morphological characteristics used in species distinction are not diagnostically valid. The valid name for this species is E. laurillardi (Lund, 1842). The type is a juvenile molariform (ZMUC 1130) from the Pleistocene of Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais, Brazil. E. mirabile (Leidy, 1855) and E. rusconii (Schaub, 1935) fall as junior synonyms. www.vertpaleo.org/publications/jvp/15-830-841.cfm
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Post by another specialist on Aug 13, 2007 7:32:06 GMT
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Post by another specialist on Aug 13, 2007 7:34:40 GMT
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Post by another specialist on May 5, 2008 17:55:18 GMT
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Post by another specialist on May 23, 2008 15:10:41 GMT
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