Folivora
Sloths are a Neotropical group of xenarthran mammals constituting the suborder Folivora, including the extant arboreal tree sloths and extinct terrestrial ground sloths. Noted for their slowness of movement, tree sloths spend most of their lives hanging upside down in the trees of the tropical rainforests of South America and Central America. Sloths are considered to be most closely related to anteaters, together making up the xenarthran order Pilosa.
Daniella Maraschiello · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- PilosaPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Xenarthra
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Xenarthra
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 27 million years on record.
The record covers at least 27.3 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 33.9 Mya to 0 Mya.
1,673 occurrences of Folivora on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
1,673 occurrences- Oligocene1%
- Miocene31%
- Pliocene10%
- Pleistocene57%
- Holocene1%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
195 formations
- Santa Cruz Formation111
- La Victoria Formation · Honda Group56
- Villavieja Formation · Honda Group52
- Ituzaingo Formation41
- Cerro Azul Formation21
- Palm Spring Formation18
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Folivora has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 171 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 795 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Folivora and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Folivora and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
2,029 taxa- Equus92 sites
- Camelops54 sites
- Megalonyx54 sites
- Paramylodon harlani54 sites
- Hemiauchenia45 sites
- Platygonus45 sites
- Odocoileus36 sites
- Canis latrans32 sites
- Odocoileus virginianus31 sites
- Sylvilagus31 sites
- Hemiauchenia macrocephala30 sites
- Plesippus simplicidens30 sites
- Dasypus bellus26 sites
- Camelidae24 sites
- Mammut americanum23 sites
- Tapirus23 sites
- Mammuthus columbi22 sites
- Camelops hesternus21 sites
- Capromeryx21 sites
- Peromyscus21 sites
- Thomomys21 sites
- Gomphotheriidae20 sites
- Megalonyx leptostomus20 sites
- Neotoma20 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 899 sites for Folivora, and this reads 240 of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
587 references- Xenarthrans: Pilosans70
- Xenarthrans of the collection of Santiago Roth from the Pampean Region of Argentina (Pleistocene), in Zurich, Switzerland41
- Ground sloths from the Friasian La Venta fauna, with additions to the pre-Frasian Coyaima fauna of Colombia, South America40
- Paleobiology of the Santacrucian sloths and anteaters (Xenarthra, Pilosa)39
- A systematic reassessment and paleogeographic review of fossil Xenarthra from Peru33
- Synonymies and reidentifications of North American fossil mammals33
- The Scelidotheriinae Ameghino, 1904 (Phyllophaga, Xenarthra) from the Ensenadan–Lujanian Stage/Ages (Early Pleistocene to Early-Middle Pleistocene–Early Holocene) of Argentina30
- Miocene vertebrates from Entre Rios province, eastern Argentina30
- A new specimen of Eremotherium laurillardi (Xenarthra, Megatheriidae) from the Late Pleistocene of Chiapas, southern of Mexico, and comments about the distribution of the species in Mexico29
- Les Mammiferes Pleistocenes de la Republique de L´Equateur20
- Bioestratigrafía de la Formación Santa Cruz (Mioceno Inferior) en el extremo sudeste de la Patagonia19
- Overview of the geology and vertebrate biochronology of the Leisey Shell Pit Local Fauna, Hillsborough County, Florida17
Each of the 1,673 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 575 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Folivora
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Daniella Maraschiello
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Folivora was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Sloth”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itPilosa through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Delsuc et al. 2001