Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In mammalogy, a Cuvierian order of mammals; the edentates. The term is literally incorrect, and in so far objectionable, few of these animals being edentulous or toothless; and the Linnean equivalent term, Bruta, is often employed instead. But the name is firmly established, and the members of the order do agree in certain dental characters, which are these: that incisors are never present, and that the teeth, when there are any, are homodont and (excepting in Tatusiinæ) monophyodont, growing from persistent pulps, and being devoid of enamel. The Edentata are ineducabilian placental mammals, with a relatively small cerebrum of one lobe, but otherwise very diversiform in structure, appearance, and mode of life; the old-world forms are likewise widely different from those of the new world; most edentates are of the latter. The armadillos, sloths, and ant-eaters of America, and the fodient ant-eaters and scaly ant-eaters of Africa and Asia, represent respectively five leading types of Edentata, affording a division of the order into the five suborders Loricata (armadillos), Tardigrada (sloths), Vermilinguia (American ant-eaters), Squamata (scaly ant-eaters or pangolins), and Fodientia (digging ant-eaters or aardvarks). The tardigrades, including a number of gigantic fossil forms, as the mylodous and megatheriums, formerly called
Gravigrada , are herbivorous, and the living forms are all arboricole. The others are carnivorous and chiefly insectivorous, and it is among these that the entirely toothless forms occur, as in the ant-eaters. The Cuvierian Edentata included the Monotremata, now long since eliminated. - A group of crustaceans.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Zoöl.) An order of mammals including the armadillos, sloths, and anteaters; -- called also
Bruta . The incisor teeth are rarely developed, and in some groups all the teeth are lacking.
WordNet 3.0
- n. order of mammals having few or no teeth including: New World anteaters; sloths; armadillos.
Examples
“South America is the home of a peculiar order of mammalia -- of the edentata, to which belong the sloth, the armadillo, and the like.”
The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality
“The three lowest orders of mammals, namely, marsupials, edentata, and rodents, coexist in South America in the same region with numerous monkeys, and probably interfere little with each other.”
“The three lowest orders of mammals, namely, marsupials, edentata, and rodents, co-exist in South America in the same region with numerous monkeys, and probably interfere little with each other.”
“The sloth, indeed, is specially adapted in organization to an arboreal residence, but this change is individual, not tribal, this animal being an aberrant form of the ground-dwelling edentata.”
“Lastly, the law of the long endurance of allied forms on the same continent, — of marsupials in Australia, of edentata in America, and other such cases, — is intelligible, for within a confined country, the recent and the extinct will naturally be allied by descent.”
“Lastly, the law of the long endurance of allied forms on the same continent, -- of marsupials in Australia, of edentata in America, and other such cases, -- is intelligible, for within a confined country, the recent and the extinct will naturally be allied by descent.”
“No doubt the extraordinary development of tongue is given to it for the same purpose as to the _edentata_ of the ant-eating tribe -- to enable it to "lick up" the _termites_.”
“Lastly, the law of the long endurance of allied forms on the same continent, -- of marsupials in Australia, of edentata in”
“Australia, of edentata in America, and other such cases, -- is intelligible, for within a confined country, the recent and the extinct will naturally be allied by descent.”
“The edentata being proved (as I hold) to have been mere temporary migrants into North America in the post-Pliocene epoch, form no part of its Tertiary fauna.”
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