Paleotoca

As Wikipedia dryly notes,

A paleotoca is an underground shelter (tunnel, burrow, lair, etc.) excavated by extinct paleo-vertebrate megafauna (i.e., giant mammals) that lived in the prehistoric era.

And then, you take a look at a few examples.

These examples are from Brazil, and were likely created by extinct species of giant sloths or armadillos,

[Heinrich]Frank believes the biggest burrows – measuring up to five feet in diameter – were dug by ground sloths. He and his colleagues consider as possibilities several genera that once lived in South America and whose fossil remains suggest adaptation for serious digging: Catonyx, Glossotherium and the massive, several-ton Lestodon. Others believe that extinct armadillos such as PampatheriumHolmesina or Propraopus, though smaller than the sloths, were responsible for even the largest burrows.

 

2 thoughts on “Paleotoca”

Leave a Reply