Prepotherium

Prepotherium
Temporal range: Early-Mid Miocene
~17.5–11.6 Ma
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Superorder: Xenarthra
Order: Pilosa
Family: †Megatheriidae
Subfamily: †Megatheriinae
Tribe: †Megatheriini
Subtribe: †Prepotheriina
Genus: Prepotherium
Ameghino, 1891
Species
  • P. filholi
  • P. moyani
  • P. potens Ameghino 1891

Prepotherium is an extinct genus of Prepotheriina ground sloths that lived during the Miocene period. Fossils of Prepotherium have been found in the Collón-Cura and Santa Cruz Formations of Argentina.[1]

Prepotherium differed from Megatherium by being smaller and having a less exaggeratedly convex inferior border of the lower jaw.[2]

Redefined species

An additional species from Venezuela, P. venezuelanum, was named by R. Collins in 1935.[3] from fossils found in the Portuguesa state and additional remains from the Acre state in Brazil.[4] However, this species was later reclassified in its own genus, Pseudoprepotherium, as a basal member of another family of ground sloths, the Mylodontidae.[5][6]

References

  1. ↑ Prepotherium at Fossilworks.org
  2. ↑ A History of Land Mammals in the Western Hemisphere, by William Berryman Scott
  3. ↑ Collins, R.L., 1934. Venezuelan Tertiary Mammals. Johns Hopkins University Studies in Geology (11), 23-244.
  4. ↑ M. A. Cozzuol. 2006. The Acre vertebrate fauna: Age, diversity, and geography. Journal of South American Earth Sciences 21:185-203
  5. ↑ Hirschfeld SE. 1985. Ground sloths from the Friasian La Venta Fauna, with additions to the pre-Friasian Coyaima Fauna of Colombia, South America. University of California Publications, Geological Sciences 128: 1–91.
  6. ↑ Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villagra, Orangel A. Aguilera, Alfredo A. Carlini. The fossil vertebrate record of Venezuela. In Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villagra, Orangel A. Aguilera, and Alfredo A. Carlini, Urumaco and Venezuelan Paleontology The Fossil Record of the Northern Neotropics. 2010 Publisher: Indiana University Press, p. 26
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