Characteristic of Eremotherium was its robust physique with comparatively long limbs and front and hind feet especially for later representatives- three fingers.

Like today's sloths, Eremotherium was purely herbivorous and was probably a mixed feeder that dined on leaves and grasses that adapted its diet to local environments and climates.

Only two valid species are known, Eremotherium laurillardi and E. eomigrans, the former was named by prolific Danish paleontologist Peter Lund in 1842 based on a tooth of a juvenile individual that had been collected from Pleistocene deposits in caves in Lagoa Santa, Brazil alongside fossils of thousands of other megafauna.

[1] The first published discovery was only a year after M. mirabile was discovered, when portions of 2 teeth that had been also collected from Skidaway Island were referred to Megatherium later in 1823 by Dr. Samuel L.

[4] 20 more fossils from the island were reported in 1824 by naturalist William Cooper, including mandibular, limb, and dental remains, that now reside at the Lyceum of Natural History in New York, that had also been collected by Joseph C.

[1] Fossils from South America were first described by Danish paleontologist and founder of Brazilian paleontology Peter Wilhelm Lund when he established a new species of Megatherium based on two teeth (specimen number ZMUC 1130 and 1131) from Lapa Vermella, a cave in the valley of the Rio de la Velhas in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais under the name Megatherium laurillardi, the first named species now assigned to Eremotherium.

[11][12] However, this view is mostly contradicted and argues that at least in the Late Pleistocene in South and North America there was only a single species, E. laurillardi, which had a strong sexual dimorphism.

[12] Discoveries of extensive material of Eremotherium at sites such as those at Nova Friburgo in Brazil and Daytona Beach in Florida further prove that the two were synonymous and lacked any major differences between populations.

[12] Fossils of Eremotherium from Mexico were first described in 1882 by French scientist Alfred Duges, though they consisted only of a fragmentary left femur, as a new species of the South American Scelidotherium, naming it S.

[14] Another species that is currently considered valid was described in 1997 by Canadian zoologist Gerardo De Iuliis and French paleontologist Pierre-Antoine St-Andréc based on a single, approximately 39 cm long femur from the Pleistocene strata in Ulloma, Bolivia as Eremotherium sefvei, though it was first described in 1915 as a fossil of Megatherium.

The generic name Eremotherium is derived from the Greek words ἔρημος (Erēmos "Steppe", "desert") and θηρίον (Thērion "animal") after the landscape in Santa Elena Peninsula that E. carolinese was unearthed from.

Typical for all representatives of the Megatheriidae was the clearly downward curved course of the lower edge of the bone body, which resulted from the different length of the teeth.

The thickness of the curvature of the lower margin of the mandible increased significantly in the course of individual development, but the ratio of the height of the mandibular body to the length of the tooth row remained largely the same.

Most records of Eremotherium in Brazil are from the Brazilian Intertropical Region (BIR) in the east of the country,[27] and are particularly frequently found in tank deposits (infillings of small depressions caused by erosion).

[50] The predominantly quadrupedal locomotion took place on inwardly turned feet, with the entire weight resting on the outer, fifth and possibly fourth phalanges (a pedolateral gait), whereby the talus was subject to massive reshaping.

[51][52] Likewise, the hands were turned inwards, in a position somewhat resembling the forefeet of the similarly clawed Chalicotheriidae, a now extinct group of odd-toed ungulates.

It was also unable to perform digging activities, as has been demonstrated for other large ground sloths, which can also be seen in the construction of the forearm, just as the manipulation of objects was minimised due to the limited ability of the fingers to move in relation to each other.

However, Eremotherium was able to stand up on its hind legs and pull branches and twigs with its hands, for example to reach the foliage of tall trees for feeding,[40][53] as well as make defensive strikes with its long claws.

[54] On the other hand, sometimes clustered occurrences of Eremotherium such as the 19 individuals from the sinkhole of Jirau in Brazil are considered to be accumulations over a long period of time.

[55] In the case of the likewise giant ground sloth Lestodon from central South America, experts also interpret mass accumulations of remains of different individuals in part as evidence of phased group formation.

The different expression of high-crownedness in the two large ground sloths is probably rather to be sought in adaptation to divergent habitats—more tropical lowlands in Eremotherium and more temperate regions in Megatherium.

[39] From an anatomical point of view, the only moderately wide snout and the large total chewing surface of the teeth advocate a diet adapted to mixed plant foods.

The average surface area of all teeth available for chewing food is 11,340 mm², which roughly corresponds to the values of the closely related Megatherium, but clearly exceeds those of the Lestodon, which is also giant but has a much broader snout.

These documented ailments include osteoarthritis and articular depressions, with spondyloarthropathy and calcium pyrophosphate deposition disease potentially present as well.

[17] The following phylogenetic analysis of Megatheriinae within Megatheriidae was conducted by Brandoni et al., 2018[70] that was modified from Varela et al. 2019 based on lower molariform and astragalus morphology:[71] Megathericulus Diabolotherium Anisodontherium Pyramiodontherium Proeremotherium Megatherium Eremotherium The disappearance of Eremotherium coincides with the end-Pleistocene extinction event, which post-dated arrival of humans in the Americas and saw the extinction of many megafauna (large animals) across the Americas, which included other ground sloths as well as animals like glyptodonts.

One of the latest finds of Eremotherium is from Ittaituba on Rio Tapajós, a tributary of the Amazon, that has an uncalibrated C14 date to 11,340 BP (13,470 – 13,140 calibrated) and includes several skull and lower jaw fragments.

[72] In a similar period, finds of E. laurillardi at Barcelona in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte come from strata dating from 11,324 to 11,807 years ago.

A possible indication of interaction is a tooth of Eremotherium that some authors have suggested had been modified by Paleoindians, which was unearthed from a doline on the site of the São-José farm in the Brazilian state of Sergipe.

[74] Some authors have regarded the idea as poorly evidenced, suggesting that the modification was more likely the result of natural processes,[75] while other authors supported the human modification hypothesis for this specimen based on six different techniques including stereomicroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy, ultraviolet photoluminescence analyses, synchrotron-based X-ray fluorescence and micro-CT scans.

[76] Putative evidence of human modification were also reported in specimens of other Pleistocene xenarthrans including the ground sloth Glossotherium and the glyptodont Neosclerocalyptus.