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
Type species
†Megatherium americanum Cuvier, G., 1796
Species
†M. altiplanicum Saint-André & de Iuliis, 2001 †M. tarijense Gervais & Ameghino, 1880 †M. medinae Philippi, 1893 †M. istilarti Kraglievich, 1925 †M. parodii Hoffstetter, 1949 †M. sundti Philippi, 1893 †M. gallardoi Ameghino & Kraglievich, 1921

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 Brazil in 1789.