megatherium

American  

[meg-uh-theer-ee-uhm] / ˌmɛg əˈθɪər i əm /

noun

• megatheriums,
  plural
• megatheria
  plural

1. any of the genus Megatherium of extinct giant ground sloths of the Pliocene and Pleistocene eras.

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megatherium Scientific  

/ mĕg′ə-thîr′ē-əm /

• megatheriums
  plural

1. A large, extinct ground sloth of the genus Megatherium that lived from the Miocene through the Pleistocene Epochs, primarily in South America. It was as large as an elephant, had long curved claws and teeth only in the sides of its jaws, and ate plants. The megatherium was more closely related to the modern two-toed sloth than to the three-toed sloth.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• megatheria
  plural
• megatheriums
  plural

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

megatherium megatheria megatheriums

Professor Oliver Farrington, also of the Field Museum, found fossilized bones of a fantastic toadlike creature, probably the extinct megatherium, in the state of Bahia, Brazil.

From Time Magazine Archive

The skull belonged to a megatherium, a mammoth version of a sloth.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Boohoop, boohoop!—yes, six times boohoop does that brazen megatherium blare out, vivid and distinct, above all the other sixty instruments in the orchestra.

From Second Book of Tales by Eugene Field

Here and there may be seen, projecting from the cliffs, huge skeletons of the toxodon, megatherium, mylodon, and other monsters which once in countless numbers inhabited the plains of South America.

From The Western World Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North and South America by William Henry Giles Kingston

He studied these bones with much care, and recognized at once in the megatherium a great similarity in structure to the sloth he had seen in Brazil.

From The Meaning of Evolution by Samuel Christian Schmucker

Little could he imagine our own era's "wasteful megatheria."

From Salon ● Mar. 22, 2023

I, who had just come from Professor Sedgwick's Cambridge Museum of megatheria and mastodons, was ready to maintain that some cleverer elephants or mylodonta had borne off and laid these rocks one on another.

From Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 2 Great Britain and Ireland, Part 2 by Francis W. (Francis Whiting) Halsey

Here he stood facing an immense collection of scattered leptotheria, mericotheria, lophiodia, anoplotheria, megatheria, mastodons, protopithecæ, pterodactyles, and all sorts of extinct monsters here assembled together for his special satisfaction.

From A Journey to the Interior of the Earth by Jules Verne

Those of the bulk of the mastodons, megatheria, glyptodons, and diprotodons, are uniparous.

From The Romance of Natural History, Second Series by Philip Henry Gosse

The enquirer who undertakes the study of it will sometimes be scarcely less surprised than would be the naturalist who should unexpectedly stumble upon antediluvian megatheria grazing tranquilly in the same field with prize Southdowns.

From Russia by Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace

I feel inclined to cry 'a fig for your big oysters, and your bigger megatheriums.'

From Darwin and Modern Science by A. C. (Albert Charles) Seward

Also barbacued mastodons and megatheriums, gallantly served up with fir-trees in their mouths, and tails cock-billed.

From Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II by Herman Melville

"If a thousand megatheriums were let loose upon the world, in twenty-four hours they would all be in museums."

From Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1876 by Various

They came in on the Overland, and I find that the professor has made the long journey on the strength of what I once told him about the megatheriums and things.

From The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush by Francis Lynde

"Why, for my part, on the contrary, I should have taken special care to preserve megatheriums and pterodactyles, and all the antediluvian species of which we are unfortunately deprived by his neglect."

From In Search of the Castaways; or the Children of Captain Grant by Jules Verne