A monodominant late-Pleistocene megafauna locality from Santa Elena, Ecuador: Insight on the biology and behavior of giant ground sloths

Abstract Extinct giant ground sloths are a common taxon in New World Quaternary deposits, but relatively little is known about individual species' behavior or social structure. In this paper, we investigate the development of the late-Pleistocene locality Tanque Loma on the southwest coast of Ecuador, which preserves remains of at least 22 individuals of the giant ground sloth, Eremotherium laurillardi in asphaltic sediments. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that these sloths may have congregated and died in a mass mortality event in a marshy riparian habitat. Such evidence includes (1) a dense, laterally-extensive, bonebed-style accumulation; (2) a multigenerational age structure with adult and large juvenile individuals well-represented; (3) sediments suggestive of a low-energy anoxic aquatic environment; and (4) the presence of abundant plant material consistent with digested fodder representing coprolites or gut contents of E. laurillardi. Taking observations from modern megafaunal ecosystems as an analogue, we suggest that this death event could have resulted from drought and/or disease stemming from the contamination of the wallow, paralleling situations observed among hippopotamus populations in watering holes on the present-day African savannah.