ArticleScientific reports2021
Isotope data from amino acids indicate Darwin's ground sloth was not an herbivore.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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10 citing papers in PubMed, 38 citations in OpenAlex.
- Repeated migration informs amino acid nitrogen isotope incorporation in the African elephant Loxodonta africana.Oecologia · 2026Article
- Article
- Lost giants, lost functions: palaeodietary insights into the ecological niches of Pleistocene ground sloths.Biology letters · 2025Article
- FirstProceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Metabolic skinflint or spendthrift? Insights into ground sloth integument and thermophysiology revealed by biophysical modeling and clumped isotope paleothermometry.Journal of mammalian evolution · 2025Article
- A new non-destructive method to decipher the origin of organic matter in fossils using Raman spectroscopy.RSC advances · 2024Article
- Bayesian Total-Evidence Dating Revisits Sloth Phylogeny and Biogeography: A Cautionary Tale on Morphological Clock Analyses.Systematic biology · 2024Article
- Article
- Xenarthrans of the collection of Santiago Roth from the Pampean Region of Argentina (Pleistocene), in Zurich, Switzerland.Swiss journal of palaeontology · 2023Article
- Spinal fracture reveals an accident episode in Eremotherium laurillardi shedding light on the formation of a fossil assemblage.Scientific reports · 2022Article
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9 authors at 6 institutions in 3 countries.
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Abstract
Fossil sloths are regarded as obligate herbivores for reasons including peculiarities of their craniodental morphology and that all living sloths feed exclusively on plants. We challenge this view based on isotopic analyses of nitrogen of specific amino acids, which show that Darwin's ground sloth Mylodon darwinii was an opportunistic omnivore. This direct evidence of omnivory in an ancient sloth requires reevaluation of the ecological structure of South American Cenozoic mammalian communities, as sloths represented a major component of these ecosystems across the past 34 Myr. Furthermore, by analyzing modern mammals with known diets, we provide a basis for reliable interpretation of nitrogen isotopes of amino acids of fossils. We argue that a widely used equation to determine trophic position is unnecessary, and that the relative isotopic values of the amino acids glutamate and phenylalanine alone permit reliable reconstructions of trophic positions of extant and extinct mammals.
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