Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
Available On Air Stations
Watch Live

Ice Age Sloth Latest Fossil at SD Site

The latest find at the future downtown campus of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law were fossils from a giant ground sloth, which likely lived about 600,000 years ago during an Ice Age, researchers sa

A mammoth, a whale and now a prehistoric sloth. Paleontologists aren't sure what fossils they'll find next at a construction site near downtown San Diego.

The latest find at the future downtown campus of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law were fossils from a giant ground sloth, which likely lived about 600,000 years ago during an Ice Age, researchers said Monday.

The sloth's bones - vertebrae, teeth and skull fragments - are poorly preserved and may not be salvageable, paleontologist Pat Sena said.

Advertisement

Work on the law school was first delayed Feb. 3 when construction crews unearthed the site's first mega stash of megafauna: fossilized remains of a 500,000-year-old mammoth.

About three weeks later, researchers from the San Diego Natural History Museum found 600,000-year-old whale bones buried about 10 feet under the mammoth.

The latest find was at the same depth as the whale but farther away from the other fossilized skeletons.

All three animals date from the Pleistocene Period.