Long before today’s tree-dwelling sloths, a 4-ton giant roamed South America — and it may have stood and fought like a bear.

SAO PAULO (AP) — Sloths weren’t always slow-moving, furry tree-dwellers. Their prehistoric ancestors were huge — up to 4 tons (3.6 metric tons) — and when startled, they brandished immense claws. For ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Harlan's ground sloth fossil skeleton excavated and displayed at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. Larisa DeSantis A two-toed ...

The largest sloth of all time was the size of an elephant. Known to paleontologists as Eremotherium, the shaggy giant shuffled across the woodlands of the ancient Americas between 60,000 and five ...

Paleontologist Thaís Pansani standing in front of a reconstructed giant ground sloth skeleton at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. AP SAO PAULO (Associated Press) — Sloths weren’t ...

Researchers in Costa Rica have unearthed fossils from a mastodon and a giant sloth that lived as many as 40,000 years ago, officials announced Friday, calling it the biggest such find here in decades.

Ancient sloths lived in trees, on mountains, in deserts, in boreal forests and on open savannas. Some grew as large as elephants. Illustration by Diego Barletta The largest sloth of all time was the ...

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Imagine a sloth. You probably picture a medium-size, tree-dwelling creature hanging ...