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Megatherium Geology is the study of Earth. It examines Earths substances, forms, processes and history. Geology also gives start to all other sciences making them work. The farther we take a geological question, the more other sciences come into action. If one brings up the question of geology, the first thought appears is rocks. But rocks are found to be not just stones.
These rocks are stories. To figure out the Earth, rocks are where to start. If one takes a closer look at them, she or he may see signs of the kind of environment where the rocks formed - geography. One can focus on the minerals making up the rocks it leads to chemistry. There may be fossils, remains and signs of ancient life. It is biology.
Their magnetic evidence may show that they, along with a large neighborhood, traveled here from somewhere else. That brings one into physics. A major unit of the geologic time scale is period, typically on the order of 50 million years, during which time the rocks of the corresponding system were formed. Era is the broadest division of geologic time, grouping together related geologic periods; examples are the Cenozoic, Mesozoic, and Paleozoic eras. 1 Exploring this series of eras and periods will take you on a journey through the history of the Earth, with stops at particular points in time to examine the fossil record and stratigraphy, the study and interpretation of strata (layered rocks and sediments), including their origin, subsequent history, and interrelations. 2 You might wish to start in the Cenozoic Era (65 million years ago to the present) and work back through time, or start with Hadean time (4. 5 to 3. 8 billion years ago) and journey forward to the present day. No matter "when" you start, don't forget to stop along the way to learn about the stratigraphy, ancient life, fossil localities, and tectonics of the various time periods. A lot of things have changed in the 65 million years from the disappearance of the dinosaurs to the present time.
The continents have moved around the planet, climate changes have seen global greenhouse conditions replaced with vast ice ages. All this times produced its creatures, leaving a lot of material to work on for the geologists. 3 In our research, we will emphasize more on bio stratigraphy, which is fundamental building blocks of many wider-ranging geoscience studies. Together with other branches of the science, it provides the common language of geology. Biostratigraphy provides an understanding of the duration and periodicity of geological events and the framework to study the process of evolution. It will also help us to explore the main object of our research, which is megatherium. First of all it should be said that Megatherium was a mammal with shaggy fur.
It had huge and curled claws on its back feet and long claws on the front used for digging and pulling tree branches. It walked on its front knuckles and on the sides of its back feet. It was very clumsy because of its unusual claws. Some scientists believe that is the reason they are extinct. Megatherium had a thick tail with a blunt point.
They usually grew to 18 to 20 feet long. In comparison, it can be said that Megatherium was as big as an elephant. 4 Megatherium lived in the period from 2, 000, 000 to 11, 000 years ago during the Pleistocene epoch in South America. This ice-age was the largest of the ground sloths. It was a huge, slow-moving mammal. Megatherium's name means "great beast. " Megatherium was named by paleontologist in 1856. the first Megatherium fossil was found in Brazil in 1789.
Some scientists assume that it lived a few hundreds of years ago because of fur and skin found in caves. Megatherium lived in South America and southern North America. Scientists have found fossils of megatherium in targets as far north as Texas and as far south as Argentina. It is known that Megatherium was a herbivore. It ate leaves, roots, and fruit. It could have eaten leaves from the tops of trees while standing straight on its hind legs, using its tail for keeping balance.
It is known that Megatherium was hunted by smilodon and other sabre-tooth cats. The only protection Megatherium had was little pebbles on its bones. 5 As it was mentioned some people think megatherium physiology made it extinct. But most scientists believe that megatherium went extinct because of the first men that came from Asia to North and South America. The people who came hunted megatherium for food and for fur and hides to make clothes and blankets. Another theory is that humans carried new germs and diseases from Asia that could have harmed megatherium. 6 Megatherium is known from many skeletons and sets of fossilized footprints, that came from the Americas, from Texas in the north and Argentina in the south. Unlike its living relatives, the tree sloths, Megatherium must have been one of the most impressive animals to walk on the planet.
The claws on the feet suggests that it could not put its feet flat on the ground, and it had to walk on the sides of its feet. Its footprints show that it walked mainly on just its hind legs. More amazingly, it walked on the outsides of its feet rather than stepping flat on the ground, because of its long claws. Megatherium had peg-like teeth, powerful jaws, and a thick, short tail. It had three hook-like claws on each foot. It walked on four legs.
Remained skin and hair show that they had long, shaggy, dark brown hair. Megatherium had large, grinding teeth at the back of its mouth. Preserved dung from ground sloths in North America shows that they ate a range of vegetation. It has been suggested that Megatherium used its enormous claws to scavenge meat from predators like and may even have killed other animals. 7 Perhaps, Megatherium was an ancestor of the modern lazy animal. But he had a remarkable difference with this one. As we already know, it was as tall as five or six meters and a mammal, which was similar to his modern type with four hands and feet.
Fatty and over weight of such a heavy weight animal. This is a question raised by scientists. Short and fat feet, strong tail, little with strong neck and long hairs indicate that he just like modern lazy animals used to live on the trees. It looks like this is a crazy idea, regarding its enormous size of a megatherium. Its heavy weight or its resemblance to animals living on trees? Scientists believe that despite its physics, it has developed enough to live on trees.
It used to move slowly on earth and by bending the branches of trees eat of their fruits. It looks like to say that modern lazy animal does not climb trees and live only on earth, but in this case all of them fall prey to other animals very soon. So how we are able to answer this question? 8 If we believe in the theory of increasing earth's gravity, we can easily answer this question. Though megatherium had a big body, it might not have had great weight, so that branches were able to bear it. Scientists counted the weight of megatherium considering its colossal weight. But the mistake they make at their calculation is that they use the present high attraction force of earth.
Which gives a big weight figure and concluding that it is unbearable to branches. But earth's gravity force was less than today and the calculation must be done by using them gravity force. In the result, it gives lesser weight bearable to branches, so that they were able to live on trees. Later on proper their body little by little to the size of their today. 9 Thus we see that to accept the increase in earth's gravity force help us answer a great deal of questions, even we can answer some questions which we were not able to answer before. As an example of geological discovery, we can take the founding of megatherium's remaining's in South America. The remains of nine great quadrupeds, and many detached bones, were found embedded on the beach in South America, within the space of about 200 yards square.
It is a remarkable circumstance that so many different species were found together. it also proves how numerous in kind the ancient inhabitants of this country must have been. First demonstration of the Design of Megatherium took place at the second annual meeting of the British Association held in city of Oxford in 1832, organized by Buckland. On the night of June 23 rd he gave a long lecture at the Holywell Music Room. The lecture was never published but is still extant in the form of 72 pages of beautiful copperplate handwriting. To Buckland Megatherium was an excellent creature to demonstrate for some understandable reasons.
Some time before, almost complete skeleton of the extinct Megatherium had been brought back from the Pampas in South America. Its very grossness and bizarre structure made it remarkable. It was a good twelve foot in length, eight foot high with enormous feet a yard long. It gave a considerable challenge to any whom wished to demonstrate design from its odd anatomy. 10 Bibliography: Cartelle. C. The medial carpal and metacarpal elements of Eremotherium and Megatherium (Xenarthra: Mammalia).
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 13: 525 - 533, 1993. Casinos, A. Bipedalism and quadrupedal ism in Megatherium: an attempt at biomechanical reconstruction. Lethaia, 29: 87 - 96, 1996. De Iuliis, G. A systematic review of the Megatheriinae (Mammalia: Xenarthra: Megatheriidae).
Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, 781 pp. , 1996. Day, R. E. Biostratigraphical Methods of Dating and Correlation.
Geological Society Special Publication, 1995. Emery, D. & Myers, K. J. (eds. ) Sequence Stratigraphy. Blackwell Science, Oxford. 1996. Farina, R. A. , and R.
E. Blanco. 1996. Megatherium, the stabber. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 263: 1725 - 1729.
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