First Record of Giant Anteater (Xenarthra, Myrmecophagidae) in North America

Abstract
A right metacarpal III represents the first North American record of the giant anteater ( Myrmecophaga tridactyla ). Recovered in northwestern Sonora, Mexico, with a rich vertebrate fauna of early Pleistocene (Irvingtonian) age, it belongs to a cohort of large mammals that dispersed from South America to North America along a savanna corridor. Presumably habitat and climatic changes have subsequently driven this mammalian family more than 3000 kilometers back into Central America from its former expansion into temperate North America.