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

But when the priest of the megatherium cried: "Who will have this stranger for a god?" there was a veritable tempest of falling wreaths.

From Tales From J?kai by J?kai, M?r

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 Field, Eugene

The charm is in seeing it classified—the recent sloth accounted for by the ancient megatherium.’

From Hopes and Fears or, scenes from the life of a spinster by Yonge, Charlotte Mary

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

From Salon ● Mar. 22, 2023

Surely they were the weirdest, most destructive and wasteful megatheria in the whole history of mechanical invention.

From The War in the Air by Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)

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 Verne, Jules

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 Halsey, Francis W. (Francis Whiting)

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

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

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 Melville, Herman

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

From Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1 by Darwin, Francis, Sir

"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

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

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

I expect to be served," murmured the journalist in him, "by beautiful tame megatheriums, in sashes.

From Romance Island by Gale, Zona