14 DAY TRIAL // Workers digging at the foundation of a Peruvian home to install a new set of water pipes came across the oldest known sloth fossil in history. The animal was found buried together with a massive armadillo, which was estimated to be about the same age as the peaceful herbivorous mammal. Initial estimates say that the fossil is at least five million years old, and that the arid and very hot conditions in Peru helped the nature preserve the wonderful remains for all this time.
Compared with sloths that still live today, their ancestor was considerably larger, but researchers say that it was smaller than creatures living at the same time. Archaeologists and anthropologists are delighted about the find, telling that the animal is at least four times older than any other specimen found elsewhere in the two Americas. This could mean that the fossil represents an intermediary step in sloths' evolution, which could hint at how and why the animals became smaller, and eventually ended up living in trees, rather than on the ground, as they did in the distant past.
“This skeleton of the sloth is especially important as it is the first complete skeleton of its kind that is 5 million years old in the Americas. Previously, discoveries have been made of partial skeletons of similar animals, but from the Pleistocene era, meaning from the last million years,” one of the scientists involved in the French-sponsored digs, Rodolfo Salas, told Reuters. The expert is also a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in Peru. He added that the discoveries were made in the southern parts of the country, in the elevated area of Espinar. The fossil itself was located at an altitude of over 13,000 feet (3,960 meters) above sea level.
Peru is one of the best places to search for fossils, archaeologists share, because of its elevated temperatures. Due to the hot air, which stores little to no humidity, animal and human remains got dehydrated shortly after the beings died, and got covered in dust and soil. Over the thousands of years, the hot sand acted like a sealed chamber, not allowing water or air to pass through. Thus, the fossil was preserved almost perfectly, and it would appear that most of its bones are in the deposit.