The Life of Yesterday 



The great ground sloths which were charac- 

 teristic of later Pliocene times lingered on, and 

 in the wanner intervals occupied portions of 

 the woodlands as far north as Ohio, and even 

 Oregon. These were creatures short of limb 



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and heavy of body, whose coarse teeth indicate 

 that they fed on leaves and twigs. The sloths 

 of to-day dwell in the tree tops, but these sloths 

 of a geologic yesterday were far too large for 

 tree-dwellers, so large that a Spanish naturalist 

 objected to their being classed with the eden- 

 tates, on the ground that all the other members 

 of the group could dance in the body of a 

 single specimen. However, as noted in various 

 places, size is not a character, and although 

 Megatherium (the largest member of the 

 group) had the bulk, if not the height, of 

 an elephant, its place is with the sloth and 

 ant-eater. 



The probable habits of these huge ground 

 sloths have been so vividly pictured by W. K. 

 Parker that one can not do better than copy 

 his words : " Let us," he says, " try to imagine 

 a megatherium waking up after lazily dozing a 



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