The evolution of armadillos, anteaters and sloths depicted by nuclear and mitochondrial phylogenies: implications for the status of the enigmatic fossil Eurotamandua

The mammalian order Xenarthra (armadillos, anteaters and sloths) is one of the four major clades of placentals, but it remains poorly studied from the molecular phylogenetics perspective. We present here a study encompassing most of the order's diversity in order to establish xenarthrans' intra-ordinal relationships, discuss the evolution of their morphological characters, search for their extant sister group and specify the timing of their …