Information: - Megatherium (from the Greek "mega" [], meaning "great", and "therion" [], "beast") was a genus of elephant-sized ground sloths endemic to South America that lived from the Early Pliocene through the end of the Pleistocene. Its size was exceeded by only a few other land mammals, including mammoths and "Paraceratherium". - Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is a country comprising the island of Cuba as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located in the northern Caribbean where the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Ocean meet. It is south of both the U.S. state of Florida and the Bahamas, west of Haiti, and north of Jamaica. Havana is the largest city and capital; other major cities include Santiago de Cuba and Camaguey. Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean, with an area of , and the second-most populous after Hispaniola, with over 11 million inhabitants. - The superorder Xenarthra is a group of placental mammals, extant today only in the Americas and represented by anteaters, tree sloths, and armadillos. The origins of the order can be traced as far back as the Paleocene, as early as 59 million years ago in South America. Xenarthrans developed and diversified extensively in South America during its long period of isolation in the early to mid Cenozoic Era. They had invaded the Antilles by the early Miocene and, starting about 9 Mya, spread to Central and North America as part of the Great American Interchange. Nearly all of the formerly abundant megafaunal xenarthrans, such as ground sloths, glyptodonts, and pampatheres, became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene. - Elephants are large mammals of the family Elephantidae and the order Proboscidea. Two species are traditionally recognised, the African elephant ("Loxodonta africana") and the Asian elephant ("Elephas maximus"), although some evidence suggests that African bush elephants and African forest elephants are separate species ("L.africana" and "L.cyclotis" respectively). Elephants are scattered throughout sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Elephantidae is the only surviving family of the order Proboscidea; other, now extinct, members of the order include deinotheres, gomphotheres, mammoths, and mastodons. Male African elephants are the largest extant terrestrial animals and can reach a height of and weigh . All elephants have several distinctive features, the most notable of which is a long trunk or proboscis, used for many purposes, particularly breathing, lifting water, and grasping objects. Their incisors grow into tusks, which can serve as weapons and as tools for moving objects and digging. Elephants' large ear flaps help to control their body temperature. Their pillar-like legs can carry their great weight. African elephants have larger ears and concave backs while Asian elephants have smaller ears and convex or level backs. - Vertebrates comprise all species of animals within the subphylum Vertebrata (chordates with backbones). Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, with currently about 64,000 species described. Vertebrates include the jawless fish and the jawed vertebrates, which include the cartilaginous fish (sharks and rays) and the bony fish. - Ground sloths are a diverse group of extinct sloths, in the mammalian superorder Xenarthra. The term "ground sloth" is used as a reference for all extinct sloths because of the large size of the earliest forms discovered, as opposed to the extant "tree sloths." However, this is a historical convention and should not imply that all extinct sloths were strictly terrestrial in nature. Their most recent survivors lived in the Antilles, where it has been proposed they may have survived until 1550 BCE; however, radiocarbon dating suggests an age of between 2819 and 2660 BCE for the last known occurrence of "Megalocnus" in Cuba. Ground sloths had been extinct on the mainland of North and South America for 10,000 years or more. Their later survival in the Caribbean correlates with the later colonization of this area by humans. Some insular sloth populations persisted 5,0006,000 years longer than their continental mainland relatives, in congruence with the global pattern of late Quaternary large vertebrate extinction due to human dispersal. - Mammals are any vertebrates within the class Mammalia (from Latin "mamma" "breast"), a clade of endothermic amniotes distinguished from reptiles and birds by the possession of a neocortex (a region of the brain), hair, three middle ear bones and mammary glands. The sister group of mammals may be the extinct "Haldanodon." The mammals represent the only living Synapsida, which together with the Sauropsida form the Amniota clade. The mammals consist of the Yinotheria including monotrema and the Theriiformes including the theria. - Paraceratherium is an extinct genus of hornless rhinoceros, and one of the largest terrestrial mammals that has ever existed. It lived from the early to late Oligocene epoch (3423 million years ago); its remains have been found across Eurasia between China and the Balkans. It is classified as a member of the hyracodont subfamily Indricotheriinae. ""Paraceratherium"" means "near the hornless beast", in reference to "Aceratherium", a genus that was once thought similar. - The Pliocene (also Pleiocene) Epoch is the epoch in the geologic timescale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58 million years BP. It is the second and youngest epoch of the Neogene Period in the Cenozoic Era. The Pliocene follows the Miocene Epoch and is followed by the Pleistocene Epoch. Prior to the 2009 revision of the geologic time scale, which placed the four most recent major glaciations entirely within the Pleistocene, the Pliocene also included the Gelasian stage, which lasted from 2.588 to 1.806 million years ago, and is now included in the Pleistocene. - Hapalops is an extinct genus of ground sloth from the late Oligocene of South America . Though related to the giant Megatherium , Hapalops was much smaller , measuring about 1 metre ( 3.3 ft ) in length . Like most extinct sloths it is categorized as a ground sloth , but it is believed that the smaller size of Hapalops allowed it to engage in some climbing behaviors . - A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus, proboscideans commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived from the Pliocene epoch (from around 5million years ago) into the Holocene at about 4,500 years ago in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. They were members of the family Elephantidae, which also contains the two genera of modern elephants and their ancestors. Mammoths stem from an ancestral species called "M. africanavus", the African mammoth. These mammoths lived in northern Africa and disappeared about 3 or 4 million years ago. Descendants of these mammoths moved north and eventually covered most of Eurasia. These were "M. meridionalis", the 'southern mammoths'. - The ground sloths of the extinct genus Megalocnus ("Great Sloth") were among the largest of the Caribbean ground sloths, with individuals estimated to have weighed up to when alive. Two species are known, "M. rodens" of Cuba, and "M. zile" of Hispaniola. Subfossils of "M. rodens" indicate survival well into the Holocene, prompting speculation that they may have survived in the montane forests of the Cuban highlands until the 15th or 16th century. However, the most recent AMS radiocarbon date reported is 4190 BP, calibrated to c. 4700 BP. This is similar to the most recent date reported for a Hispaniolan sloth, 4391 BP, calibrated to c. 5000 BP, for the small and probably arboreal "Neocnus comes", and some 1200 years after the earliest known date for human occupation of Cuba, 5140 BP, calibrated to c. 5900 BP. Their relatives include other Caribbean ground sloths, such as "Acratocnus", "Mesocnus", "Miocnus", "Neocnus", "Parocnus", and "Paulocnus". - Sloths are mammals classified in the families Megalonychidae (two-toed sloths) and Bradypodidae (three-toed sloths), including six extant species. They are named after the capital sin of sloth because they seem slow and lazy at first glance; however, their usual idleness is due to metabolic adaptations for conserving energy. Aside from their surprising speed during emergency flights from predators, other notable traits of sloths include their strong body and their ability to host symbiotic algae on their furs. After reading the paragraphs above, we are interested in knowing the entity with which 'hapalops' exhibits the relationship of 'parent taxon'. Find the answer from the choices below. Choices: - amniota - area - chordata - elephantidae - elephas - human - la - mammoth - megalonychidae - neogene - proboscidea - rhinoceros - sauropsida - sloth - theria - theriiformes - therion - vertebrata - xenarthra
A:
megalonychidae