Mionothropus is an extinct genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 of nothrotheriine nothrotheriid

Megatheriidae

Megatheriidae is a family of extinct ground sloths that lived from approximately 23 mya—11,000 years ago, existing for approximately .Megatheriids appeared later in the Oligocene, some 30 million years ago, also in South America. The group includes the heavily-built Megatherium and Eremotherium...

 sloth

Sloth

Sloths are the six species of medium-sized mammals belonging to the families Megalonychidae and Bradypodidae , part of the order Pilosa and therefore related to armadillos and anteaters, which sport a similar set of specialized claws.They are arboreal residents of the jungles of Central and South...

 which existed in Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

 in western Amazonia, during the late Miocene (Huayquerian

Huayquerian

The Huayquerian age is a period of geologic time within the Miocene epoch of the Neogene used more specifically with South American Land Mammal Ages. It follows the Mayoan and precedes the Montehermosan age....

 age). It is known from the holotype

Holotype

A holotype is a single physical example of an organism, known to have been used when the species was formally described. It is either the single such physical example or one of several such, but explicitly designated as the holotype...

 LACM 4609/117533, which includes cranial

Cranial

Cranial may refer to:* an adjective related to the cranium* Anatomical terms of location* Cranial cavity* Cranial Osteopathy...

 remains, recovered from the riverbank deposits of the Río Acre region, were originally assigned to Nothropus priscus

Nothropus

Nothropus is an extinct genus of actively mobile ground sloth of the family Megatheriidae, endemic to South America during the Pleistocene epoch. It lived from 1.8 mya—78,000 years ago existing for approximately .-Taxonomy:...

. It was first named by Gerardo De Iuliis, Timothy J. Gaudin and Matthew J. Vicars in 2011

2011 in paleontology

-Lobopods:-Arachnids:-Insects:-Newly named jawless vertebrates:-Newly named acanthodian:-Newly named cartilaginous fishes:-Newly named bony fishes:-Newly named lepospondyls:-Newly named temnospondyls:-Newly named lissamphibians:...

 and the type species is Mionothropus cartellei. The generic name is derived from "Mio", is a reference to the Miocene provenance of the holotype, and "nothropus" refers to the initial allocation of the holotype to this genus from the South American Pleistocene. The specific name honours Dr. Castor Cartelle.

Phylogeny

Cladogram

Cladogram

A cladogram is a diagram used in cladistics which shows ancestral relations between organisms, to represent the evolutionary tree of life. Although traditionally such cladograms were generated largely on the basis of morphological characters, DNA and RNA sequencing data and computational...

 after De Iuliis, Gaudin & Vicars, 2011: