Jul 15, 2019
We've
officially hit a decade of MonsterTalk. In this episode we get "old
school" and talk about the legendary Mapinguari, and how cryptozoologists have tried to explain the
folklore of this massive South American animal by claiming it to be
a kind of Bigfoot
creature, or even a
Giant Ground
Sloth. We take a deep dive
into what Paleontology can tell us about the real historical
records of Giant Ground Sloths (Megatherium) and see how well these
creatures line up with the legend of the Mapinguari.Our guest is
Uruguayan
paleontologist Dr. Richard A. Fariña.
Links
David
C. Oren's theory of Sloths as possible explanation of Mapinguari
has been covered in
The New York Times
and
Discovery Magazine.
We
also discussed a few megafauna in this episode. Here's our
Who's Who
for those names:
Gomphothere
- similar to an elephant or
mammoth
Glyptodon - similar to an enormous armadillo
Megatherium - a gigantic ground sloth that is the main
paleontological subject of the episode