Megatherium
Appearance
Megatherium | |
---|---|
Skeleton of Megatherium americanum in the Natural History Museum, London | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | |
Phylum: | |
Class: | |
Superorder: | |
Order: | |
Family: | |
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.