Anthropomorpha is a defunct taxon which contained the manlike, or anthropoid, ape

Ape

Apes are Old World anthropoid mammals, more specifically a clade of tailless catarrhine primates, belonging to the biological superfamily Hominoidea. The apes are native to Africa and South-east Asia, although in relatively recent times humans have spread all over the world...

s.

The order was established by Carl Linnaeus in the first edition of his book Systema Naturae

Systema Naturae

The book was one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carolus Linnaeus. The first edition was published in 1735...

 (1735) for genera Homo

Homo (genus)

Homo is the genus that includes modern humans and species closely related to them. The genus is estimated to be about 2.3 to 2.4 million years old, evolving from australopithecine ancestors with the appearance of Homo habilis....

(humans), Simia

Simia

In his Systema Naturae of 1758, Carolus Linnaeus divided the Order Primates into four genera: Homo, Simia, Lemur, and Vespertilio. His Vespertilio included all bats, and has since been moved from Primates to Chiroptera...

(monkeys and apes in general) and Bradypus (sloths). In the 1758 edition of the same book, Linnaeus discarded this name and began to use the word Primates, which has replaced Anthropomorpha completely.

The name is no longer considered valid, as the animals that were included within Anthropomorpha are now believed to belong to multiple clade

Clade

A clade is a group consisting of a species and all its descendants. In the terms of biological systematics, a clade is a single "branch" on the "tree of life". The idea that such a "natural group" of organisms should be grouped together and given a taxonomic name is central to biological...

s. For example, two-toed sloth

Two-toed sloth

Choloepus is a genus of mammals of Central and South America, within the family Megalonychidae consisting of two-toed sloths. There are only two species of Choloepus : Linnaeus's Two-toed Sloth and Hoffmann's Two-toed Sloth...

s were included within Anthropomorpha, but are now considered to be in the family Megalonychidae

Megalonychidae

Megalonychidae is a group of sloths including the extinct Megalonyx and the living two toed sloths. Megalonychids first appeared in the early Oligocene, about 35 million years ago, in southern Argentina , and spread as far as the Antilles by the early Miocene...

, which is not closely related to the primate

Primate

A primate is a mammal of the order Primates , which contains prosimians and simians. Primates arose from ancestors that lived in the trees of tropical forests; many primate characteristics represent adaptations to life in this challenging three-dimensional environment...

s. The taxon Anthropomorpha was originally proposed by Carolus Linnaeus

Carolus Linnaeus

Carl Linnaeus , also known after his ennoblement as , was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology...

, although Linnaeus' archenemy, the Comte de Buffon, correctly rejected the combination of sloths and humans within the same order.