Nothrotheriops is a genus of Pleistocene ground sloth found in North America, from what is now central Mexico to the southern United States.

[4] Fossils of the best-known species, the Shasta ground sloth (N. shastensis), have been found throughout western North America, especially in the American Southwest.

Numerous dung boluses belonging to Nothrotheriops have also been found throughout the southwestern United States and have provided an insight into the diet of these extinct animals.

[10] Nothrotheriops behaved like all typical ground sloths of North and South America, feeding on various plants like the desert globemallow, cacti, and yucca.

It was hunted by various local predators, like dire wolves and Smilodon, from which the sloths may have defended themselves by standing upright on hindlegs and tail and swiping with their long foreclaws, like its distant relative Megatherium, as conjectured in the BBC series Walking with Beasts.

[7] The Rampart Cave, located on the Arizona side of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, has a plentiful amount of the sloth's hair and dung, both of which scientists used for radiocarbon dating to establish when it lived.