A new enigmatic Late Miocene mylodontoid sloth from northern South America.
R Soc Open Sci
; 2(2): 140256, 2015 Feb.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-26064594
ABSTRACT
A new genus and species of sloth (Eionaletherium tanycnemius gen. et sp. nov.) recently collected from the Late Miocene Urumaco Formation, Venezuela (northern South America) is herein described based on a partial skeleton including associated femora and tibiae. In order to make a preliminary analysis of the phylogenetic affinities of this new sloth we performed a discriminate analysis based on several characters of the femur and tibia of selected Mylodontoidea and Megatherioidea sloths. The consensus tree produced indicates that the new sloth, E. tanycnemius, is a member of the Mylodontoidea. Surprisingly, the new taxon shows some enigmatic features among Neogene mylodontoid sloths, e.g. femur with a robust lesser trochanter that projects medially and the straight distinctly elongated tibia. The discovery of E. tanycnemius increases the diversity of sloths present in the Urumaco sequence to ten taxa. This taxon supports previous studies of the sloth assemblage from the Urumaco sequence as it further indicates that there are several sloth lineages present that are unknown from the better sampled areas of southern South America.
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Idioma:
En
Revista:
R Soc Open Sci
Ano de publicação:
2015
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Venezuela