Scelidotheriidae is a family of extinct
ground sloths within the order
Pilosa, suborder
Folivora and superfamily
Mylodontoidea, related to the other extinct mylodontoid family,
Mylodontidae, as well as to the living
two-toed sloth family
Choloepodidae. The only other extant family of the suborder Folivora is the distantly related
Bradypodidae. Erected as the family Scelidotheriidae by
Ameghino in 1889, the taxon was demoted to a subfamily of Mylodontidae by Gaudin in 1995.[1][2] However, recent collagen sequence data indicates the group is less closely related to Mylodon and Lestodon than Choloepus is, and thus it has been elevated back to full family status by Presslee et al. (2019).[3]
Taxonomy
Together with Mylodontidae, and the two-toed sloths, the scelidotheriids form the
superfamilyMylodontoidea. Chubutherium is an ancestral and very
plesiomorphic member of this family and does not belong to the main group of closely related genera.
Phylogeny
The following sloth family phylogenetic tree is based on collagen and mitochondrial DNA sequence data (see Fig. 4 of Presslee et al., 2019).[3]
Cuvier, G. (1796): Notice sur le squelette d'une très grande espèce de quadrupède inconnue jusqu'à présent, trouvé au Paraguay, et déposé au cabinet d'histoire naturelle de Madrid. Magasin encyopédique, ou Journal des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts (1): 303-310; (2): 227-228.
Nowak, R.M. (1999): Walker's Mammals of the World (Vol. 2). Johns Hopkins University Press, London.
White, J. (1993). "Indicators of locomotor habits in xenarthrans: Evidence for locomotor heterogeneity among fossil sloths". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 13 (2): 230–242.
Bibcode:
1993JVPal..13..230W.
doi:
10.1080/02724634.1993.10011502.