''Pachyarmatherium'' is a genus of extinct large

armadillo Armadillos () are New World placental mammals in the order (biology), order Cingulata. They form part of the superorder Xenarthra, along with the anteaters and sloths. 21 extant species of armadillo have been described, some of which are dis ...

-like cingulates found in

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography. Etymology T ...

and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

from the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

epochs, related to the

extant Extant or Least-concern species, least concern is the opposite of the word extinct. It may refer to: * Extant hereditary titles * Extant literature, surviving literature, such as ''Beowulf'', the oldest extant manuscript written in English * Exta ...

armadillos and the

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

pampatheres and glyptodonts. It was present from 4.9 Mya to 11,000 years ago, existing for approximately .

Taxonomy

''Pachyarmatherium'' was named by Downing and White (1995). Its type is ''P. leiseyi''. It was assigned to Dasypodoidea by Downing and White (1995), and tentatively to Glyptodontidae by McKenna and Bell (1997). A

cladistic Cladistics ( ; from Ancient Greek 'branch') is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups ("clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is ...

analysis performed by de O. Porpino et al. (2009) led to the conclusion that ''Pachyarmatherium'' is a sister group to a

clade In biology, a clade (), also known as a Monophyly, monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach t ...

consisting of Glyptodontidae and Pampatheriidae. Oliveira et al. (2013) suggest that ''Pachyarmatherium'' is a possible dasypodid.

Fossil distribution of ''Pachyarmatherium''

A-Pleistocene-meso-megamammals-from-Sergipe-Brazil

''P. leiseyi''

* Kissimmee River site,

Tamiami Formation The Tamiami Formation is a Late Miocene to Pliocene geologic formation in the southwest Florida peninsula. Age Period (geology), Period: Neogene Epoch (geology), Epoch: Late Miocene to Pliocene Faunal stage: Clarendonian through Blancan ~13.06 ...

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~4.9—1.8 Mya. * Haile 16A Site,

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~1.8 Mya.—300,000 years ago. * Payne Creek Mine,

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~1.8 Mya—300,000 years ago. * Leisey Shell Pit 1A, Bermont Formation,

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~1.8—300,000 years ago.

''P. tenebris''

* Zumbador Cave (= Cueva del Zumbador) - Capadare Formation, Falcón, Venezuela, Pleistocene * Cueva El Miedo (= Cave Fear), Capadare Formation,

Lujanian The Lujanian age is a South American land mammal age within the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs of the Neogene, from 0.8–0.011 Mya (unit), Ma or 800–11 tya (unit), tya. It follows the Ensenadan. The age is usually divided into the middle Pleist ...

, Falcón, Venezuela, ~800,000-11,000 BP

''P. brasiliense''

Lajedo de Escada, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, Late Pleistocene, 100,000 years BP

Taxonomy

Fossil distribution of ''Pachyarmatherium''

''P. leiseyi''

''P. tenebris''

''P. brasiliense''

References

Further reading