Megatherium

Megatherium
Temporal range: Late Pliocene to Early Holocene
Skeleton of Megatherium americanum in the Natural History Museum, London
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
Chordata
Class:
Mammalia
Superorder:
Xenarthra
Order:
Pilosa
Family:
†Megatheriidae
Genus:
†Megatherium

Cuvier, 1796

Megatherium was a huge, bulky, slow-moving mammal that lived during the Pleistocene epoch in South America. It went extinct about 11,000 years ago. This ice-age mammal was the largest of the ground sloths; Megatherium's name means "great beast." Megatherium was named by paleontologist Richard Owen in 1856; the first Megatherium fossil was found in Argentina in 1789.

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