megatherium

American  

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

noun

plural

megatheriums, megatheria

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 /

plural

megatheriums

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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Example Sentences

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

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 Schmucker, Samuel Christian

With the first light of the white sun, a half-grown megatherium cub rose slowly from its crouch at the mouth of the cave and stretched luxuriously, showing a full set of saber-like teeth.

From The Thing in the Attic by Blish, James Benjamin

Had the bear been a mastodon or a megatherium it would have been all the same to the panic-stricken ram.

From Hoof and Claw by Roberts, Charles George Douglas, Sir