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Information about Xenarthra

Xenarthra
Fossil range: Middle Paleocene - Recent
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Hoffmann's Two-toed Sloth

Scientific classification
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Class:Mammalia
Infraclass:Eutheria
Superorder:Xenarthra
Cope, 1889
Orders and suborders
* Suborder Folivora
* Suborder Vermilingua

See text for more details
The superorder Xenarthra is a group of placental mammals (infraclass Eutheria), extant today only in the Americas. The origins of the order can be traced back as far as the early Tertiary (about 60 million years ago, shortly after the Mesozoic era). The presence of these animals in North America is explained by the Great American Interchange.

It includes the anteaters, sloths, and armadillos. In the past, these families were classified together with the pangolins and Aardvark as the order Edentata (meaning toothless, because the members do not have front incisor teeth or molars, or have poorly-developed molars). It was subsequently realized that Edentata was polyphyletic—that it contained unrelated families and was thus invalid by cladistic standards. Aardvarks and pangolins are now placed in individual orders, and the new order Xenarthra was erected to group the remaining families (which are all related). The name Xenarthra means "strange joints", and was chosen because their vertebral joints are unlike those of any other mammals. Because they lack characteristics believed to be present in the common ancestor of other known Eutherian mammals, morphological evidence suggests that the Xenarthra are outside the Epitheria, which contains all other known Eutherians today.

The morphology of Xenarthrans generally suggests that the anteaters and sloths are closest together within Xenarthra. The order Xenarthra is more and more often divided into two orders: Pilosa, containing the Vermilingua and Folivora (previously Tardigrada), and the separate order Cingulata. Xenarthra now has the rank of cohort or super-order. The Xenarthra are part of the super-cohort Atlantogenata.

SUPERORDER XENARTHRA
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Extant mammal orders by subclass
The Paleocene, "early dawn of the recent", is a geologic epoch that lasted from 65.5 ± 0.3 Ma to 55.8 ± 0.2 Ma (million years ago). It is the first epoch of the Palaeogene Period in the modern Cenozoic era.
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C. hoffmanni

Binomial name
Choloepus hoffmanni
Peters, 1858

The Hoffmann's Two-toed Sloth, Choloepus hoffmanni, is a species of sloth from Central and South America.
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Scientific classification or biological classification is a method by which biologists group and categorize species of organisms. Scientific classification also can be called scientific taxonomy, but should be distinguished from folk taxonomy, which lacks scientific basis.
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Chordata
Bateson, 1885

Typical Classes

See below

Chordates (phylum Chordata) are a group of animals that includes the vertebrates, together with several closely related invertebrates.
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Mammalia
Linnaeus, 1758

Subclasses & Infraclasses
  • Subclass †Allotheria*
  • Subclass Prototheria
  • Subclass Theria

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Eutheria

Orders[1]
  • Bobolestes
  • Eomaia
  • Maelestes
  • Montanalestes
  • Murtoilestes
  • Prokennalestes
  • Placentalia
  • Superorder

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Edward Drinker Cope (July 28, 1840–April 12, 1897) was an American paleontologist and comparative anatomist, as well as a noted herpetologist and ichthyologist.

Cope was born in Philadelphia to Quaker parents.
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19th century - 20th century
1850s  1860s  1870s  - 1880s -  1890s  1900s  1910s
1886 1887 1888 - 1889 - 1890 1891 1892

:
Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
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Cingulata
Illiger, 1811

Families
  • Pampatheriidae (prehistoric)
  • Glyptodontidae (prehistoric)
  • Dasypodidae


Armadillos are small placental mammals, known for having a bony armor shell.
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Pilosa
Flower, 1883

Suborders

Vermilingua - anteaters
Folivora - sloths

The order Pilosa is a group of placental mammals, extant today only in the Americas. It includes the anteaters and sloths.
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Folivora
Delsuc et al, 2001

Families

Megalonychidae
Bradypodidae
†Rathymotheriidae
†Scelidotheriidae
†Mylodontidae
†Orophodontidae
†Megatheriidae

Sloths
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Vermilingua
Illiger, 1811

Families

Cyclopedidae
Myrmecophagidae
Anteaters are the four mammal species of the suborder Vermilingua commonly known for eating ants and termites.
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Eutheria

Orders[1]
  • Bobolestes
  • Eomaia
  • Maelestes
  • Montanalestes
  • Murtoilestes
  • Prokennalestes
  • Placentalia
  • Superorder

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Tertiary geological time interval covers roughly the time span between the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs and beginning of the most recent Ice Age, approximately 65 million to 1.8 million years ago.
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The Mesozoic Era is one of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic eon. The division of time into eras dates back to Giovanni Arduino, in the 18th century, although his original name for the era now called the 'Mesozoic' was 'Secondary' (making the modern era the 'Tertiary').
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North America is a continent [1] in the Earth's northern hemisphere and (chiefly) western hemisphere. It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the southeast by the Caribbean Sea, and on the south and west
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The Great American Interchange was an important paleozoogeographic event in which land and freshwater fauna migrated from North America via Central America to South America and vice versa, as the volcanic Isthmus of Panama rose up from the sea floor and bridged the continents.
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Vermilingua
Illiger, 1811

Families

Cyclopedidae
Myrmecophagidae
Anteaters are the four mammal species of the suborder Vermilingua commonly known for eating ants and termites.
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Folivora
Delsuc et al, 2001

Families

Megalonychidae
Bradypodidae
†Rathymotheriidae
†Scelidotheriidae
†Mylodontidae
†Orophodontidae
†Megatheriidae

Sloths
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Cingulata
Illiger, 1811

Families
  • Pampatheriidae (prehistoric)
  • Glyptodontidae (prehistoric)
  • Dasypodidae


Armadillos are small placental mammals, known for having a bony armor shell.
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Pholidota
Weber, 1904

Family: Manidae
Gray, 1821

Genus: Manis
Linnaeus, 1758

Species

Manis culionensis
Manis gigantea

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This article relies largely or entirely upon a .
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This article has been tagged since July 2007.
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polyphyletic (Greek for "of many races") if the trait its members have in common evolved separately in different places in the phylogenetic tree. Equivalently, a polyphyletic taxon does not contain the most recent common ancestor of all its members.
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Scientific classification or biological classification is a method by which biologists group and categorize species of organisms. Scientific classification also can be called scientific taxonomy, but should be distinguished from folk taxonomy, which lacks scientific basis.
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Cladistics is a philosophy of classification that arranges organisms only by their order of branching in an evolutionary tree and not by their morphological similarity, in the words of Luria et al. (1981).
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The Vertebral Column (singular: vertebra) are the individual irregular bones that make up the spinal column (aka ischis) — a flexuous and flexible column.
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Eutheria

Orders[1]
  • Bobolestes
  • Eomaia
  • Maelestes
  • Montanalestes
  • Murtoilestes
  • Prokennalestes
  • Placentalia
  • Superorder

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Epitheria

Orders and Clades
  • Superorder Afrotheria:
  • Afrosoricida (Golden mole and tenrec)
  • Macroscelidea (Elephant shrew)

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Vermilingua
Illiger, 1811

Families

Cyclopedidae
Myrmecophagidae
Anteaters are the four mammal species of the suborder Vermilingua commonly known for eating ants and termites.
..... Click the link for more information.


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