A new record of ground sloth in the Ribeira de Iguape valley, southeastern Brazil

Abstract

In the early 1980s, an assemblage of extinct and extant vertebrates was collected from the Abismo Ponta de Flecha, a vertical cave in southern São Paulo, Brazil, for archaeological, geological, and paleontological analyses. While materials identified as ground sloths have been referenced in earli-er publications, they have never been thoroughly described. In this study, we provide the first detailed description of a large, previously unidentified taxon found in Brazil, interpreted herein as belonging to the family Nothrotheriidae. Although direct dating of the specimen was not possible, other dated occur-rences from the Ribeira de Iguape Valley suggest that it may have inhabited the region during the Late Pleistocene, coinciding with the local presence of a dense forest cover.