Interesting perspective on giant ground sloths and late Pleistocene life in general. In short, humans lived alongside these beasts, even hunted them. So why is there no memory of them, even in storytelling traditions? Basically, as we study their remains and try to discern information about them and their environment, we are relearning stuff that humans of the past would actually have known from lived experience. Also has some interesting stuff on giant sloths, like maybe the biggest ones would have lost their fur, similar to large modern mammals like elephants and rhinos.
And then we go waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back, to look at the origins of the moon. The current most widely accepted hypothesis is that another planet, perhaps Mars-sized, hit the Earth when it was still in its very early molten form. The remains from that collision then coalesced to form the moon. But there's issues with that hypothesis and many of the details are still fuzzy or speculative. Here's a look at the current state of knowledge about where the moon came from.
And finally, a video from the other day, World Oceans Day. It's a collaboration between One World, an ocean ecology and conservation channel, and 7 Days of Science. Why this collaboration? One World is owned by the mother of Ben Thomas, founder of 7 Days of Science, and Ben helped his mom get it going.
