page_title: Mylodon
section_title: Discovery
hierarchical_section_title: Mylodon / Discovery
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Fossil of Mylodon, an extinct mammal-- Took the photo at Natural History Museum, London
context_page_description: Mylodon is an extinct genus of ground sloths that lived in South America; Patagonia. The most recent credible date obtained from its remains has been reported to be 10,200 BP.
context_section_description: At several sites preserved hide and dung have been discovered, and are in such a state of conservation that the people who first discovered them believed they belonged to a living animal instead of an extinct species. Mylodon was named by Richard Owen on the basis of a nearly complete lower jaw with teeth, which was found by Charles Darwin in a consolidated gravel cliff at Bahía Blanca, during the survey expedition of HMS Beagle.
  Well preserved samples of Mylodon remains have been discovered in the Cueva del Milodón site in Patagonia, Chile along the southern flank of Cerro Benítez in the year 1896. Associated with bones of other early Patagonian animals, these remains of Mylodon date from an era earlier than 10,000 BC. The American Museum of Natural History has exhibited a sample of Mylodon dung from Argentina with a note that reads "deposited by Theodore Roosevelt".
  The discovery of fresh looking samples of skin and dung sparked a small wave of expeditions during the early 20th century to search for a living example of the animal. The samples have since been found to be around 10,000 years old, although they look fresh because of the extreme cold and stable conditions in the caves in which they were found.
  Fossils assigned to Mylodon have also been found in the Ñuapua Formation of Bolivia.
caption: Toe nails, dung and skin, Natural History Museum, London
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