''Analcitherium'' is an extinct genus of scelidotheriid sloth that lived during the Early Miocene in what is now

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, t ...

. Fossils have been found in the

Santa Cruz Formation The Santa Cruz Formation is a geological formation in the Magallanes/Austral Basin in southern Patagonia in Argentina and in adjacent areas of Chile. It dates to the late Early Miocene epoch, and is contemporaneous with eponymous Santacrucian ...

of Argentina.

Taxonomy

'' Analcitherium'' was first named by

Florentino Ameghino Florentino Ameghino (born Giovanni Battista Fiorino Giuseppe Ameghino September 19, 1853 – August 6, 1911) was an Argentine naturalist, paleontologist, anthropologist and zoologist, whose fossil discoveries on the Argentine Pampas, especiall ...

in 1891 based on fossils found in Argentina, dating to the Early Miocene. Originally thought to belong to a juvenile '' Nematherium'', it is now usually considered to be a distinct genus. ''Analcitherium'' is a member of the Scelidotheriidae, a group of terrestrial sloths known from the Oligocene and Pleistocene that a characterized by an elongated snout. Although scelidotheriids are usually placed as a subfamily of the

Mylodontidae Mylodontidae is a family of extinct South American and North American ground sloths within the suborder Folivora of order Pilosa, living from around 23 million years ago (Mya) to 11,000 years ago. This family is most closely related to another fa ...

, they are sometimes considered to be a separate family,

Scelidotheriidae 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 Ch ...

. Below is a phylogenetic tree of the Mylodontidae, based on the work of Varela ''et al''. 2018.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q113267346 Prehistoric sloths Prehistoric placental genera Miocene mammals of South America Miocene xenarthrans Neogene Argentina Fossils of Argentina Santacrucian Fossil taxa described in 1891 Taxa named by Florentino Ameghino Austral or Magallanes Basin Santa Cruz Formation