Scelidotheriidae is a family of extinct mammals within the order of Pilosa

Pilosa

The order Pilosa is a group of placental mammals, extant today only in the Americas. It includes the anteaters and sloths, including the recently extinct ground sloths....

 and suborder Folivora. This family of ground sloths is related to the other families of extinct ground sloths, being the Megatheriidae

Megatheriidae

Megatheriidae is a family of extinct ground sloths that lived from approximately 23 mya—11,000 years ago, existing for approximately .Megatheriids appeared later in the Oligocene, some 30 million years ago, also in South America. The group includes the heavily-built Megatherium and Eremotherium...

, the Mylodontidae

Mylodontidae

Mylodontidae is a family of extinct mammals within the order of Pilosa and suborder Folivora living from approximately 23 mya—11,000 years ago, existing for approximately . This family of ground sloths is related to the other families of extinct ground sloths, being the Megatheriidae, the...

, the Nothrotheriidae, and the Orophodontidae

Orophodontidae

Orophodontidae is a family of extinct ground sloths within the order of Pilosa and suborder Folivora. The name is often disused with genus members reassigned....

. The only extant families of the suborder Folivora are the Bradypodidae and the Megalonychidae

Megalonychidae

Megalonychidae is a group of sloths including the extinct Megalonyx and the living two toed sloths. Megalonychids first appeared in the early Oligocene, about 35 million years ago, in southern Argentina , and spread as far as the Antilles by the early Miocene...

.

Together with the Mylodontidae and the engimatic Pseudoprepotherium, the scelidotheriids form the superfamily

Taxonomic rank

In biological classification, rank is the level in a taxonomic hierarchy. Examples of taxonomic ranks are species, genus, family, and class. Each rank subsumes under it a number of less general categories...

 Mylodontoidea. Chubutherium

Chubutherium

Chubutherium ferelloii is an extinct species of ground sloth .This species of ground sloth shared many of the traits with members of the Mylodontidae family. C. ferelloii first appeared in the Oligocene and died out during the Middle Miocene. It is related to the Pleistocene genus, Scelidotherium....

is an ancestral and very plesiomorphic member of this family and does not belong to the main group of closely related genera.

FAMILY †SCELIDOTHERIIDAE Ameghino

Florentino Ameghino

Florentino Ameghino was an Argentine naturalist, paleontologist, anthropologist and zoologist.Born in Luján, son of Italian immigrants, Ameghino was a self-taught naturalist, and focused his study on the lands of the southern Pampas...

, 1889

• Genus †Chubutherium
  Chubutherium
  Chubutherium ferelloii is an extinct species of ground sloth .This species of ground sloth shared many of the traits with members of the Mylodontidae family. C. ferelloii first appeared in the Oligocene and died out during the Middle Miocene. It is related to the Pleistocene genus, Scelidotherium....
  
  (basal)
• Subfamily †Scelidotheriinae
  • Genus †Scelidotheriops
  • Genus †Analcitherium
  • Genus †Nematherium
  • Genus †Neonematherium
  • Genus †Elassotherium
  • Genus †Scelidotherium
    Scelidotherium
    Scelidotherium is an extinct genus of actively mobile ground sloth of the family Mylodontidae, endemic to South America during the middle Pleistocene epoch. It lived from 780,000—11,000 years ago, existing for approximately ....
    
    
  • Genus †Catonyx
    Catonyx
    Catonyx is an extinct genus of actively mobile ground sloth of the family Mylodontidae, endemic to South America during the Late Pleistocene epochs. It lived from 126,000—11,000 years ago, existing for approximately ....
    
    
  • Genus †Proscelidodon

External links

• Sloth World: An Online Sloth Bibliography.
• Picture and information about a ground sloth skeleton on display at the University of Georgia's Science Library.
• Academy of Natural Sciences ground sloth page.
• Illinois State Museum ground sloth page.
• Ground sloths at La Brea.
• Eremotherium in Florida.
• Have some ground sloths survived in Argentina?
• Ground sloths in general.
• Western Center for Archaeology and Paleontology Hemet, CA