Scelidotheriinae [SEP] parent taxon
Scelidotheriinae
Scelidotheriinae is a subfamily of extinct ground sloths within the order Pilosa, suborder Folivora and family Mylodontidae, related to the other extinct mylodontid subfamilies, Lestodontinae and Mylodontinae. The only extant families of the suborder Folivora are Bradypodidae and Megalonychidae. Erected as the family Scelidotheriidae by Ameghino in 1889, the taxon was demoted to a subfamily by Gaudin in 1995.
Taxonomy.
Together with the rest of Mylodontidae and the engimatic "Pseudoprepotherium", the scelidotheriines form the superfamily Mylodontoidea. "Chubutherium" is an ancestral and very
Taxon in disguise
In bacteriology, a taxon in disguise is a species, genus or higher unit of biological classification whose evolutionary history reveals has evolved from another unit of similar or lower rank, making the parent unit paraphyletic. This happens when rapid evolution makes a new species appear radically different from the ancestral group, so that it is not (initially) recognised as belonging to the parent phylogenetic group, leaving the latter an evolutionary grade.
While the term is from bacteriology, parallel examples are found throughout the tree of