They and the human bones ended up in the same pit through the same mechanism — the pit trap that the chamber represented for any terrestrial animal that fell in.

Their presence alongside Naia’s skeleton is spatial rather than behavioral: they shared a location, not necessarily an event.

But the fact that ground sloths were present in the Yucatán at the time Naia was alive — confirmed by their bones in the same chamber and dated to the same general period — is itself meaningful.

It tells us that the late Pleistocene landscape of the Yucatán included these enormous animals, along with the gomphotheres and the other megafauna species whose bones also appear in the chamber.

Naia and her community lived in a landscape that was, in its large animal fauna, radically different from the Yucatán of any subsequent period.