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Science 10 April 1987:
Vol. 236. no. 4798, pp. 186 - 188
DOI: 10.1126/science.236.4798.186
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Articles

First Record of Giant Anteater (Xenarthra, Myrmecophagidae) in North America

CHRISTOPHER A. SHAW 1 and H. GREGORY MCDONALD 2

1 George C. Page Museum, Los Angeles, CA 90036.
2 Cincinnati Museum of Natural History, Cincinnati, OH 45202.

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.

Submitted on October 27, 1986
Accepted on February 26, 1987

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)