First Record of Giant Anteater (Xenarthra, Myrmecophagidae) in North America
Abstract
A right metacarpal III represents the first North American record of the giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla). Recovered in northwestern Sonora, Mexico, with a rich vertebrate fauna of early Pleistocene (Irvingtonian) age, it belongs to a cohort of large mammals that dispersed from South America to North America along a savanna corridor. Presumably habitat and climatic changes have subsequently driven this mammalian family more than 3000 kilometers back into Central America from its former expansion into temperate North America.
- Publication:
-
Science
- Pub Date:
- April 1987
- DOI:
- 10.1126/science.236.4798.186
- Bibcode:
- 1987Sci...236..186S