Remains of a Ground Sloth Found about 16 feet Below Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles

Fossils of a ground sloth and a bison have been found in Los Angeles. Workers digging a tunnel for a new railway line found these remains on May 16, which include a sloth’s hip bone and a fragment of a bison’s radius bone. The remains were hidden in a sandy clay layer, about 16 feet below Crenshaw Boulevard, between 63rd Street and Hyde Park Boulevard.

After recovering the specimens, they were sent to Paleo Solutions Laboratory for further analysis, and could be precisely identified after eight days by researchers at La Brea Tar Pits and Museum. The fossils have currently at Paleo Solutions laboratory, but will later be transferred to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles for public display.

Metro officials believe the sloth fossil could actually belong to a Harlan’s ground sloth (scientific name Paramylodon Harlani)—massive animal that got extinct about 10,000 years ago. It was a huge animal, about 1,500 pounds in weight and 10 feet long. Most of the fossils of this animal have been discovered in areas that were open grasslands or parklands in the past. Scientists believe the bison and ground sloth lived in late Pleistocene era, about 11,000 to 40,000 years ago, and then they became extinct.

In the past six months, fossil remains of some beasts have been found at least 3 times from Los Angeles. In November, remains of a mastodon were discovered when workers were digging for Purple Line expansion. Then in April, fossils were found under Wilshire Boulevard. These included forearm bone of an extinct camel species and another bone of a mastodon or a mammoth.