Posted on 12/07/2009 7:19:50 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Many archaeological finds are accidentally unearthed by construction crews, as was the discovery of a 1.8 million-year-old skull of a giant ground sloth in Southern California.
Buried in the ground since the Ice Age, the skull was found by a construction crew and could be on its way to be displayed at the San Bernardino County Museum.
Work on a new site for a Southern California Edison sub-station was immediately halted when the ancient bones were discovered while earthmovers were flattening out a hilly area west of Beaumont, which is a few miles from the low desert community of Palm Springs, said Rick Greenwood director of Edison's environment health and safety division. Any company doing construction on virgin land is required by law to have an archaeologist on such work sites. It was the contracted archaeologist who noticed patches of a white substance around the fossils' location. The license also stipulates that the museum is to receive any fossils that are discovered, Greenwood said...
Sloth fossils have been discovered before, such as the ones retrieved from the La Brea Tar Pitts located in the center of Los Angeles west of downtown, but so far those are one million years younger, Reynolds said.
The museum will study the skull remains to gain information on how sloths lived, their evolution and their habitats, Reynolds said.
"Fossils are very, very rarely preserved; so many things can happen to the body of an animal when it dies," she said. "And then when you add to that the passing of more than a million years, the chances of finding a skull are just very, very low."
(Excerpt) Read more at digitaljournal.com ...
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Norm’s fault.
I thought THE ice age was 10-11000 yrs ago?
Oh, so they’ve discovered sloths in SoCal. Big whoop. Over a third of the current SoCal population are sloths.
Damn, we should apply for a grant to study it... Gravy Train!!!
Good grief — 9 replies and everyone has already taken my best quips!
Hey! Hey! HEY there now Mister!
That sloth looks like someone just caught it relieving itself. Pass it some Charmin.
Just the facts, ma’am.
When I worked for Boston Edison, years ago, the impact of the study would have been compared to the schedule. If a negative finding resulted, the finding crew would have been sent to the nearest Gin Mill on OT, the Local State Rep would have two relatives put on the pay-role and the job would have been completed with a 25% over run including all payoffs. The find, what find?
All Your Sloths Are Belong to Us!
So this means that the giant sloths inhabited California for millions of years until the sacred holy “indigenous natives” who we should all look to for understanding and stewarding Nature, exterminated them shortly after arriving from Siberia.
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