Sloth Claws And Claw Cores: What's The Difference?

[MeargleSchmeargl]

I've seen people collecting Megatherium claw cores on this site for a good while, but I never did get a good look at what a complete claw would look like (since judging by the fact that they're cores, there'd have to be more to those claws in life).

 

What other components would make up the claws of animals like Megatherium, and what would a complete claw look like?

[digit]

The outer sheath surrounding the claw core (ungual) would be a keratinous sheath. Do an internet search for the terms "claw core keratinous sheath" and you'll see lots of good images on how the sheath extended over the core on various animals. That should give you some idea of how much larger giant ground sloth claws would have been with the the sheathing in place.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[MeargleSchmeargl]

16 hours ago, digit said:

The outer sheath surrounding the claw core (ungual) would be a keratinous sheath. Do an internet search for the terms "claw core keratinous sheath" and you'll see lots of good images on how the sheath extended over the core on various animals. That should give you some idea of how much larger giant ground sloth claws would have been with the the sheathing in place.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

I see...from what I can tell from a number of the pictures I've looked at using those keywords the sheaths add an extra 30(ish)% to the claw length beyond the core. That's a pretty good increase in size.

 

I'd presume that it's not very common for those sheaths to be preserved with cores, too.

[digit]

Given that the material in the sheath is basically the same that makes up our fingernails (very derived and now nearly useless "claws") they could only be preserved in some exceptional way. The two types of preservation I could think of offhand would be to see if the keratin sheaths were preserved in frozen mammoths or in fossils found in very dry caves like bears. No hits when trying to search for claw sheaths in European Cave Bears but I suspect mammoth material that is often preserved with skin (and flesh) also preserves the keratinous "toenail" sheathes.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken