Megatherioidea
Stefan Laube ( Tauchgurke ) · Public Domain · via Wikidata/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- EufolivoraPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Xenarthra
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Xenarthra
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 23 million years on record.
The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 29 Mya to 0 Mya.
902 occurrences of Megatherioidea on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
902 occurrences- Oligoceneunder 1%
- Miocene35%
- Pliocene10%
- Pleistocene54%
- Holocene1%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
149 formations
- Santa Cruz Formation99
- Ituzaingo Formation31
- La Victoria Formation · Honda Group19
- Villavieja Formation · Honda Group15
- Palm Spring Formation14
- Pisco Formation14
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Megatherioidea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 125 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 423 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Megatherioidea and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Megatherioidea and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
2,378 taxa- Equus83 sites
- Megalonyx59 sites
- Hemiauchenia43 sites
- Camelops42 sites
- Platygonus40 sites
- Odocoileus35 sites
- Odocoileus virginianus26 sites
- Tapirus26 sites
- Canis latrans24 sites
- Paramylodon harlani24 sites
- Sylvilagus24 sites
- Camelidae23 sites
- Gomphotheriidae23 sites
- Hemiauchenia macrocephala23 sites
- Plesippus simplicidens23 sites
- Panthera onca22 sites
- Dasypus bellus21 sites
- Lynx rufus21 sites
- Megalonyx leptostomus20 sites
- Capromeryx19 sites
- Eremotherium19 sites
- Mammut americanum19 sites
- Megalonychidae18 sites
- Procyon18 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 599 sites for Megatherioidea, and this reads 240 of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
426 references- Paleobiology of the Santacrucian sloths and anteaters (Xenarthra, Pilosa)34
- A new specimen of Eremotherium laurillardi (Xenarthra, Megatheriidae) from the Late Pleistocene of Chiapas, southern of Mexico, and comments about the distribution of the species in Mexico29
- Xenarthrans: Pilosans22
- A systematic reassessment and paleogeographic review of fossil Xenarthra from Peru21
- Miocene vertebrates from Entre Rios province, eastern Argentina20
- Bioestratigrafía de la Formación Santa Cruz (Mioceno Inferior) en el extremo sudeste de la Patagonia18
- Plio-Pleistocene Megalonychid Sloths of North America15
- Biostratigraphy of Blancan and Irvingtonian mammals in the Fish Creek-Vallecito Creek section, southern California, and a review of the Blancan-Irvingtonian boundary14
- Ground sloths from the Friasian La Venta fauna, with additions to the pre-Frasian Coyaima fauna of Colombia, South America13
- Overview of the geology and vertebrate biochronology of the Leisey Shell Pit Local Fauna, Hillsborough County, Florida12
- Early Miocene Sloths (Xenarthra, Folivora) From the Río Santa Cruz Valley (Southern Patagonia, Argentina), Ameghino, 1887 Revisited11
- A review of the paleoenvironment and paleoecology of the Miocene Santa Cruz Formation10
Each of the 902 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 414 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Megatherioidea
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Stefan Laube ( Tauchgurke )
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Megatherioidea was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itEufolivora through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray 1821