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A Fossil Bone of a Giant Ground Sloth from the Last Millennium of the Pleistocene: New Data from Salto Department, Uruguay

 the field-work allowed the discovery of archaeological and paleontological remains on the shore of the Itaperibí Grande Creek (31˚19'09"S, 57˚34'53"W). Belonging to the drainage basin of the Uruguay River, this watercourse, born in the Daymán hills, flows westerly in the reservoir formed by the Salto Grande dam on the Uruguay River. On its shore, and eroded from its banks, a number of archaeological and paleontological remains were found. The latter includes several extinct taxa; among them, two bones stood out because of their different kinds of marks on their surfaces. One of the most noticeable is the specimen reported in this article, a fragmented fossil femur of Lestodon armatus (Xenarthra, Mammalia). The Lestodon armatus is an extinct species of megafaunal ground sloth that inhabited South America. Lestodon is placed as a member of the Mylodontinae monophyletic group.


According to the last phylogenetic study ,it was a bulk-feeding mega-mammal, measuring ~4.5 meters from nose to tail tip and estimated to have weighed over 2 tons. Remains of this kind of ground sloth were found in the Pleistocene deposits of Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay, but some records date back to the Early Pliocene in Argentina. Particularly in northern Uruguay, the Lestodon armatus bones come from the Sopas Formation, a Late Pleistocene continental unit



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