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In addition to the Greater Antillean sloths, some other pilosans are still extant on islands close to the Central and South American mainland. This includes several anteaters and a member of the other extant sloth family, that of the three-toed sloths, restricted to a small island in Panama. [10]
Opossums probably diverged from the basic South American marsupials in the late Cretaceous or early Paleocene. They are small to medium-sized marsupials, about the size of a large house cat, with a long snout and prehensile tail. Family: Didelphidae (American opossums) Subfamily: Caluromyinae. Genus: Caluromys. Derby's woolly opossum, Caluromys ...
The order Pilosa consists of twelve extant species in two suborders: Folivora, the sloths, and Vermilingua, the anteaters.Folivora contains two families: Bradypodidae, containing four species in one genus; and Choloepodidae, containing two species in one genus.
A number of sloths were also formerly present on the Antilles, which they reached from South America by some combination of rafting or floating with the prevailing currents. Together with the armadillos , which are in the order Cingulata, pilosans are part of the larger superorder Xenarthra , a defining characteristic of which is the presence ...
South America is notable for its diversity of canids, having more genera than any other continent in spite of their relatively brief history there. South America's felid diversity is also greater than that of North America north of Mexico, while its mustelid diversity is comparable and its mephitid and ursid diversities are lower.
The Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (MBC) is a region that consists of Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and some southern states of Mexico. The area acts as a natural land bridge from South America to North America, which is important for species who use the bridge in migration. Due to the extensive ...
This is a list of the native wild mammal species recorded in Mexico.As of September 2014, there were 536 mammalian species or subspecies listed. Based on IUCN data, Mexico has 23% more noncetacean mammal species than the U.S. and Canada combined in an area only 10% as large, or a species density over 12 times that of its northern neighbors.
The marine sloths of South America's Pacific coast became extinct at the end of the Pliocene following the closing of the Central American Seaway; the closing caused a cooling trend in the coastal waters which killed off much of the area's seagrass (and which would have also made thermoregulation difficult for the sloths, with their slow ...