Revealing bone diseases in the Quaternary ground sloth Eremotherium laurillardi (Mammalia, Xenarthra)

Abstract

We performed a macroscopic and radiological inspection in a set of bones belonging to the fossil mammal assemblage of Zabelê Paleontological Site (Late Pleistocene-Northgrippian), in northeastern Brazil. Radiological analyzes were carried out using conventional X-ray and X-ray microtomography (µCT) equipment. This study revealed four different types of diseases (calcium pyrophosphate deposition disease – CPPD, infection, trauma and tendon avulsion) restricted to the giant ground sloth E. laurillardi (5.36% of MNI) and in an indeterminate mammal species. The apparent restriction to E. laurillardi is related to taphonomic/palaeoecological bias. The data expand the number of occurrences of diseases in xenarthras species.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 14 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.