The Giant Ground Sloth of Georgia

Buried under the Georgia earth, there are many treasures of ancient history. One of the most famous examples of archaeology in Georgia is the mysterious and amazing discovery on Skidaway Island.
In 1822 slaves working in the mud and sand discovered an unmarked gravesite along the wild, marshy coast of Skidaway Island. The bones they found were not like any human or animal bones they had ever seen. These bones were enormous.
Two doctors from Savannah, Dr. Joseph Habersham and Dr. James Screven, traveled by ferryboat from Savannah to the island to see for themselves if the slaves’ crazy story was true. Amazed, the doctors assumed they had found the remains of the legendary woolly mammoth.

The gravesite was named Fossilossa after the numerous bones and stone imprints, called fossils, found there. Dr. Habersham and Dr. Screven called in experts from all over the country to see Fossilossa on Skidaway Island.
Some of these experts were archaeologists. They dug around the bones and fossils to expose and preserve them. This is known as an excavation. From the bones at Fossilossa and a small piece of mummified flesh, archaeologists figured out that the grave was not that of a woolly mammoth, but instead belonged to a bizarre animal called the Giant Ground Sloth, Eremotherium.
The Giant sloth, according to the archaeologists, was the tallest land mammal that ever lived. The monstrous beast looked like a cross between a rat and a giant anteater, standing 20 feet (two stories) tall. It had giant claws, long coarse fur and bony spikes protruding from under its skin. The animal ate roots, twigs, and tree leaves and was probably docile and slow-witted. The North American variety lived in the southeastern and central United States and a South American species lived in Central America and southwestern South America.

Like the woolly mammoth, it lived during the Pleistocene Era and died out at the end of the Ice Age. Another site in Brunswick, Georgia discovered about 350 bones from three giant sloths. A researcher at the University of Georgia recreated the skeleton. The bones were discovered in 1970 during the construction of Interstate 95 near Brunswick. Graduate student, Michael Brantley, mounted the Sloth at the University of Georgia. It has been written that this skeleton was the most complete skeleton of a Ground Sloth ever found. Two other giant American sloth skeletons are on display at the Smithsonian Institute of Natural History in Washington D.C.. The Skidaway skeleton found in Georgia during the last century is at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Eda Sutcliffe Kennedy, an Interpretive Park Ranger at Skidaway State Park, can recreate for students and teachers what life was like in the Pleistocene Era on the very ground the giant ground sloth roamed.

For more information on Skidaway State Park, contact Ms. Kennedy at (912) 598-2301 or email her at skidaway@gnet.net. For a camping or family reservation go to: www.gastateparks.org.