Prehistoric sloth series#

Prehistoric sloth series#

From the first landing the pipe continues down irregularly by a series of steep slopes, nearly horizontal stretches, and vertical drops, and the diameter varies greatly.'Īfter a tortuous passage, Longwell said, he came to a 'large room some fifteen feet in width by thirty in length.' Like other rooms, he said, 'This also contains a large quantity of bat guano.' It was on the floor of this chamber that Waterhouse and his friends – to their surprise – had come upon the sloth skeleton 'almost completely buried in the dry, loose guano, and at a distance of about one hundred feet vertically below the mouth of the pit.' Along the way, they may have also seen the more recent remains of coyotes and a bobcat lying atop the guano.Ĭross-sectional sketch of the fumarole, based on a survey by John Qualls, Bill Sharp (no relationship to the author) and Fred Nakovic. The descent is nearly vertical for the first forty feet. '.it is necessary to use a rope, taking advantage of occasional irregularities in the wall for foot rests. 'The descent into the pit is difficult.' said Longwell, quoted in Richard Swann Lull's A Remarkable Ground Sloth, a scholarly report on the animal. Photo made available by the University of Texas at El Paso Library, Special Collections Department. In any event, they came prepared for adventure, but they could scarcely have anticipated what they were about to find as they lowered themselves by rope to the floor of the fumarole.Įwing Waterhouse with unidentified friend (possibly one of the Yale academics) at the mouth of the fumarole, sometime in the late 1920s. They were either boy scouts, according to the internet site Desert Diary, or musicians, according to the Berkeley Daily Gazette, February 1, 1929.

Ewing Waterhouse, Wilson Esterly and Carlos Rushing – came to the Aden Crater planning to explore the fumarole. In late 1927 or early 1928 three young men – C. How was the shasta ground sloth's carcass discovered after its plummet into such a forbidding place so many millennia ago?Īuthor's son, Michael Sharp, looking down into the mouth of the fumarole in which the shasta ground sloth was discovered in 1927 or 1928 by Ewing Waterhouse, Wilson Esterly and Carlos Rushing. The sloth would perish, the remains of its last meal still in its paunch. Longwell, Yale University, called the fumarole after exploring it in 1928. 'A most appalling death trap,' Professor Chester R. The lumbering creature, probably by misstep or from predatory pursuit, evidently stumbled and plunged into a fumarole, or gas vent, at the rim of Aden Crater-a low-lying volcanic lava cone located in the 500-square-mile Portrillo Basalt Field, southwest of Las Cruces.Īlthough, apparently, the sloth somehow survived the fall initially, it would find no escape.

One day about 11,000 years ago, as the last Ice Age drew slowly to a close, an immature shasta ground sloth – a pale yellowish animal roughly the size of a modern black bear – found disaster in what is now southwestern New Mexico.

Looking across the southern and western rim of Aden Crater. The Story of Its Discovery at Aden Crater in New Mexico

Shasta Ground Sloth Nothrotheriops shastensis