Farmers in a community in Chiapas found a fossilized femur belonging to the extinct giant ground sloth (Megatherium), a species of animal endemic to the Americas that roamed the area during the end of the pleistocene epoch, between 40,000 and 9,000 years ago, reports the Eliseo Palacios Aguilera Museum of Paleontology in Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
The fossil was found by Mario Roberto Pérez Moreno and Audelino Hernández López in a riverbed that runs through the Constitución 17 town in the Socoltenango municipality.
Marco Antonio Coutiño, director of the museum, reports that the finding was reported to the Ministry of Environment and Natural History. Experts went to the area and transferred the femur to be properly stored, preserved and subsequently displayed to the public.
Gerardo Carbot Chanona, a researcher at the museum, said that the piece is in good conditions of preservation and studies will be performed to determine its exact date, although he believes that the now extinct animal roamed the earth around 12,000 – 40,000 years ago.
Based on the length and width of the femur, researchers believe that the femur belonged to a female giant ground sloth.
The specialist also said that according to isotopic analysis performed on teeth samples from several different species found in the area, researchers believe that the climate in Chiapas at the end of the pleistocene epoch contributed to very large mammals roaming the area, such as the giant ground sloth and giant armadillo, wooly mammoths, mastodons, horses, deer, large rodents and saber-toothed cats.