English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Free Plan

The presence of the extinct sloth Megatherium americanum Cuvier in Pleistocene deposits of the Coastal Plain of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, southern Brazil, has been mentioned by several authors for decades, but formal descriptions of skeletal elements with unambiguous diagnostic features have never been published. The recent description of one dentary of the megatheriid Eremotherium laurillardi Lund from deposits in this area raised doubts about the taxonomic affinity of the materials assigned to M. americanum. The present work confirms the presence of the latter in the coastal plain of the state of Rio Grande do Sul (Santa Vitória do Palmar County), from a partial skull collected in fluvial deposits of the Santa Vitória Formation exposed on the banks of the Chuí Creek, plus an incomplete dentary, one tibia, one astragalus found on the shoreline, and another tibia with the fibula fused proximally and distally retrieved from the bottom of the continental shelf by the research vessel “Atlântico Sul”. The fossils of both species of megatheriid sloths were found in the same deposits of Rio Grande do Sul (Chuí Creek in the coastal plain and Pessegueiro Creek in the central area of the state), which is remarkable given that E. laurillardi is known mostly from the intertropical Americas, whereas M. americanum is restricted to the subtropical-temperate regions of South America. Such co-occurrence could indicate that both species were sympatric or be related to the mixing by fluvial processes of remains of animals that occupied the same areas at distinct times due to periodic latitudinal shifts of the climatic belts.

On the presence of Megatherium Cuvier, 1796 (Xenarthra, Pilosa) in fossiliferous deposits of the Coastal Plain of Southern Brazil