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

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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

Gravigrade, grav′i-grād, adj. walking heavily.—n. an animal like the megatherium, &c.

From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 2 of 4: E-M) by Various

The dean, as he went on, fell into some little confusion regarding the true place of some of his animals, such as the megatherium, which arrived in his arrangement a little too soon.

From The Testimony of the Rocks or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed by Hugh Miller

For instance, B. megatherium and B. subtilis pass in a few hours after commencement of growth from a motile stage with peritrichous cilia, into one of filamentous growth preceded by casting of the cilia.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" by Various

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

From Salon ● Mar. 22, 2023

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

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

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

All over the town manufactories and public buildings of colossal size stand, like megatheria, knee-deep in a jungle of houses.

From Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 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

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 Sir Francis Darwin

And one year I had the whole blooming faculty out here on a fossil expedition; but, by Heaven, McCloud, some of them looked more like megatheriums than what they dug up did.”

From Whispering Smith by N. C. (Newell Convers) Wyeth

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

From Romance Island by Zona Gale

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