Illustration of a sloth in André Thevet's Les Singularitez de la France Antarctique (Paris: heirs of Maurice de la Porte 1558) Courtesy of Christie's The slow-moving sloth is now something of an ...

An artist’s interpretation of mammals that lived during the last Ice Age. Fossils from similar species of an armadillo-like pampathere (bottom left) and giant ground sloth (background) were among ...

Sloths weren't always slow-moving, furry tree-dwellers. Their prehistoric ancestors were huge—up to 4 tons (3.6 metric tons)—and when startled, they brandished immense claws. For a long time, ...

Ancient sloths lived in trees, on mountains, in deserts, boreal forests and open savannahs. These differences in habitat are primarily what drove the wide difference in size between sloth species.