They were imposing enough that few predators would have attempted to take a healthy adult.

Smaller species of ground sloth were also present in the Americas, and it is these smaller species — perhaps the size of a large modern bear — that appear most frequently in the archaeological record in association with evidence of human activity.

Whether humans hunted ground sloths, scavenged them, or avoided them is debated, and the evidence is mixed across different sites and regions.

The ground sloth bones at Hoyo Negro are not associated with any evidence of human hunting or butchery.