HN Explorer

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M_Grey
Oh god. I remember hearing some years ago about the ancient ancestors of guinea pigs... bison-sized, roaming in packs. Looking at the claw-marks, clearly from a far more enormous sloth, really puts the relatively puny Guineazilla into perspective.
caio1982
For those still curious, a "modern" fruit that we can eat thanks to these mega diggers: http://www.kew.org/blogs/archived-blogs/taste-amazon

Spoiler: it's delicious, thanks megafauna! :-)

user982
A more common example: the avocado.
mfrykman
This is all I remember from my Stanford intro to humanities "World History of Science" lecture.

We'll, this and "witch's milk"..

Robert Proctor is a legend.

[dead] mfrykman
This is all I remember from my Stanford intro to humanities "World History of Science" lecture.

We'll, this and "witch's milk"..

Robert Proctor is a legend.

markdown
Is it just me or do none of the photos on that page load?
heh
Ground Sloths? I think you mean Badgermoles.

Something something secret tunnel.

jessriedel
The wikipedia page on Megatherium, the giant ground sloth, doesn't mention paleoburrows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatherium

Anyone have an info on whether other experts take this hypothesis seriously?

curtis
The impression that I got from the article is that we don't know yet, because the experts have not heard of this before either. It sounds like scientific study only goes back maybe a decade, it's been largely confined to Brazil, and the scientists involved are geologists, not paleobiologists. So is it for real? It sounds both crazy and plausible to me at the same time. I think it's too soon for us laypeople to draw any conclusions.

I'm reasonably certain this is not an April Fool's joke. Here's an article in a Brazilian newspaper from 2015 (via Google Translate): https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&u=http://...

lostlogin
Thanks - it's hard to be on alert when it's the 2nd here. I hope it isn't a joke.
fsloth
If it's not in wikipedia it does not mean it does not exist.
WhitneyLand
When was last time a natural structure this big had not been formally studied?

Paleoburrows do not even have a wikipedia entry. I suspect that's not going to last long after this article.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
inversezero
this link is redirecting to a spam advertising page after it finishes loading. anyone else seeing this?
ajmurmann
Yes, I tried reading the first sentence twice. Both times I won $1000 and then have up.

Edit: happened on iPhone

ufmace
I didn't see that, even on MS Edge with no adblockers. Malicious extensions or malware maybe?
inversezero
That's what I was afraid of too. I tried a few other pages, even others on discovery magazine site, and only see the problem with this article. I'm on a Pixel in a Chrome incognito tab when it happens.
ufmace
Well that's pretty weird. I tried it on a Chrome Incognito tab on my Nexus 5X, and that worked fine too.
dharbin
I got this too, and I've gotten it on other websites that are very popular. I can't imagine that any of these sites would intentionally host an advertisement that would make it unreadable.

The solution is to delete Safari's history and cookies. Alternatively you can use private browsing.

jbicha
No, it works fine here.

The site is non-https which allows for an internet provider to manipulate the page too. :(

atxcrab
Same here, with chrome / Android
sergers
No problems chrome / Android here
cordite
It happens to me, even in read mode. Hitting back just stalls.

Fake Facebook styling is sketchy.

bwb
This story on April 1st make me nervous, but looks legit and so amazing.
tim333
The date on the article is Mar 28th
pvaldes
I wonder how we could differenciate among old claw and old pick-axe marks. Both could be very similar.
pvaldes
There is a simple solution to explore this idea further. Is the hardness of this rock bigger than keratine or enamel?.