It’s for Pierre-Olivier Antoine “a breach towards an unknown past of Guyana”. South of the town of Maripasoula, near the border with Surinam, a giant sloth fossil was discovered at the end of 2020. The paleontologist from the Institute of Evolutionary Sciences at the University of Montpellier, who led an expedition on site from October 12 to 18, told franceinfo Tuesday October 26 that it is about “the first discovery of a remnant of the extinct mega-fauna”. This sloth whose skeletal remains have been found, also known as Eremotherium laurillardi, disappeared 12,000 years ago.
franceinfo: Can you describe what you discovered?
Pierre-Olivier Antoine: These are very large items compared to current lazy standards. You have to imagine about the size of an elephant. It is therefore a giant version of the sloth, which has almost the appearance of a bear, with very large claws, a large head and who would put himself on his hind legs so that his head rises to four meters in height.
Was he as slow as the sloth we know today?
Yes, he was probably slow, but much taller. We can therefore imagine an animal that could move without any problem on dry land. So much so that sloths are among the first animals to reach North America when the Isthmus of Panama emerged millions of years ago. Sloths are precursors!
Under what conditions was this skeleton discovered?
In somewhat special conditions since it was discovered by illegal miners. They returned the remains to the Amazonian park, then to the regional archeology service, which alerted us. We then set up an expedition with the Amazonian biodiversity study center. These skeletal remains were then carefully brought back on an Air France flight to be studied, here in Montpellier, from every angle: morphological, molecular and isotopic, for example, to characterize its diet. We have at our disposal the remains of his lower jaw, jawbone, vertebrae, ribs and some parts of an arm. However, once the study is completed, this skeleton will return to Guyana because we are committed to returning the specimens to where we found them.
How is this a great discovery?
It is a great discovery because it is the first discovery of a remnant of extinct mega fauna, that is to say giant animals that have disappeared, on the Guyana plateau and therefore in France. This discovery opens a breach into a past that was until then completely unknown in Guyana, which is a hotbed of current biodiversity. This allows us to know where and how to search to access fossils of other animals and plants, in association with this skeleton.