Today, southern Los Angeles is a wasteland of strip malls, amusement parks, and fast food restaurants. To survive in the wild there all you need is $7 and no soul. But, one and a half million years ago this was the home of the grizzly-bear-sized sloth.
Imagine, if you will, wandering through the "moist and lush" Irvingtonian period, lost somewhere between Riverside and Upland, armed with nothing but a broadsword, hacking through ferns as an epic storm roils on the horizon.
You are seeking shelter. You are pitting your wits against the cold steely will of Mother Nature. Your resolve is as firm as your well-muscled torso. And, what do you see, hanging from a tree, fast asleep in its warm woolly hide? A sloth the size of a grizzly bear. Just waiting, waiting, to be cut open and crawled inside to survive a storm in the wild.
