Workmen digging a new train line have had an "amazing discovery" after they unearthed a giant sloth bone in Los Angeles.
The large hip joint is believed to be from a Harlan's Ground Sloth that would have lived between 40,000 and 11,000 years ago.
The ancient mammal's bone was found 16ft below Crenshaw Boulevard - a major LA thoroughfare.
The animal would have been up to 10ft long and weighed around 1,500lbs (680kg) - the same as a cow.
A spokesman for the city's metro system said: "This is an amazing discovery."
A fragment of ancient bison bone was also discovered in the same sandy clay layer.
Now a hub for the world's entertainment industry, the LA lowland would have been full of sloths, bison, ancient camels, mastodons and mammoths during the late Pleistocene era.
But following a series of ice ages - as the glaciers melted and froze - many large mammals in North America became extinct 10,000 years ago, while humans continued to evolve.
Earlier this year, LA workmen found bones belonging to an ancient camel and a mastodon and mammoth during a dig to extend another train line beneath Wilshire Boulevard, around 15 miles away.
The fossils will soon be transferred, possibly for display at LA's Natural History Museum.