Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A large extinct ground sloth of the genus Megatherium of the Miocene Epoch through the Pleistocene Epoch.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The typical genus of the family Megatheriidæ, containing huge extinct sloths larger than a rhinoceros.
- noun [lowercase] An animal of this genus.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun type genus of the Megatheriidae
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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We are more surprised by finding such gigantic proportions in an animal called the megatherium, which ranks in an order now assuming much humbler forms -- the edentata -- to which the sloth, ant-eater, and armadillo belong.
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation Robert Chambers 1836
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He called Josep Maria Cruxent who identified it as being from a megatherium, a mammal from the Pleistocene, and 25 million years old.
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David Lort-Phillips and I are off to London meet Nunatak, him and Darwin's Megatherium - no that's not his megatherium of natural selection tomorrow.
Project news... 2007
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I'll walk across it myself tomorrow en route to seeing Darwin's fossil megatherium.
Archive 2007-09-01 2007
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David Lort-Phillips and I are off to London meet Nunatak, him and Darwin's Megatherium - no that's not his megatherium of natural selection tomorrow.
Archive 2007-09-01 2007
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I'll walk across it myself tomorrow en route to seeing Darwin's fossil megatherium.
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Huge elephantine forms, the mastodon, the hippopotamus, the tapir, antelopes of monstrous size, the megatherium, and the myledon — all, for the moment, in juxtaposition.
A Pair of Blue Eyes 2006
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And for the rest, they all went about their business and pleasure as if war had died out with the megatherium.
The War in the Air Herbert George 2006
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Of course, there is not, in reality, any comparison between the reasons that megatherium and brontosaurus went extinct and the reasons why Enron went under, Martha Stewart went to jail, or the Dems lost the last U.S. election.
Company/government nosesdives no different from animal extinctions, author argues Denyse O 2005
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William Buckland…is wonderful on megatherium and gave a lecture on it at the British Ass in 1831
Darwin on the argument from Ignorance - The Panda's Thumb 2005
yarb commented on the word megatherium
An elephant-sized ground sloth from the Pleistocene. Some believe megatheria were capable of flipping adult glyptodons.
January 1, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word megatherium
Reading the Wikipedia page on this animal just made me mutter, over and over, "holy sh$%.... Holy SH$%!... holy sh$%..."
September 4, 2008
reesetee commented on the word megatherium
Holy cow! I mean...holy, uh, ground sloth!
September 4, 2008