Quintana Roo, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Quintana Roo, is one of the 31 states which, with Mexico City, constitute the 32 federal entities of Mexico. It is divided into 11 municipalities, and its capital city is Chetumal.
Ground sloths are a diverse group of extinct sloths in the mammalian superorder Xenarthra. Ground sloths varied widely in size, with the largest genera Megatherium and Eremotherium being around the size of elephants. Ground sloths are a paraphyletic group, as living tree sloths are thought to have evolved from ground sloth ancestors.
Tulum is the site of a pre-Columbian Mayan walled city which served as a major port for Coba, in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. The ruins are situated on 12-meter-tall (39 ft) cliffs along the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula on the Caribbean Sea. Tulum was one of the last cities built and inhabited by the Maya and achieved its greatest prominence between the 13th and 15th centuries. Maya continued to occupy Tulum for about 70 years after the Spanish began occupying Mexico, but the city was abandoned by the end of the 16th century. Tulum is one of the best-preserved coastal Maya sites, and today a popular site for tourists.
The Yucatán Peninsula is a large peninsula in southeast Mexico and adjacent portions of Belize and Guatemala. The peninsula extends towards the northeast, separating the Gulf of Mexico to the north and west of the peninsula from the Caribbean Sea to the east. The Yucatán Channel, between the northeastern corner of the peninsula and Cuba, connects the two bodies of water.
The Pantherinae is a subfamily of the Felidae; it was named and first described by Reginald Innes Pocock in 1917 as only including the Panthera species. The Pantherinae genetically diverged from a common ancestor between 9.32 to 4.47 million years ago and 10.67 to 3.76 million years ago.
Megalonychidae is an extinct family of sloths including the extinct Megalonyx. Megalonychids first appeared in the early Oligocene, about 35 million years (Ma) ago, in southern Argentina (Patagonia). There is, however, one possible find dating to the Eocene, about 40 Ma ago, on Seymour Island in Antarctica. They first reached North America by island-hopping across the Central American Seaway, about 9 million years ago, prior to formation of the Isthmus of Panama about 2.7 million years ago. Some megalonychid lineages increased in size as time passed. The first species of these were small and may have been partly tree-dwelling, whereas the Pliocene species were already approximately half the size of the huge Late Pleistocene Megalonyx jeffersonii from the last ice age.
Sistema Ox Bel Ha is a cave system in Quintana Roo, Mexico. It is the longest explored underwater cave in the world and ranks second including dry caves. As of January 2023 the surveyed length is 435.8 kilometers (270.8 mi) of underwater passages. There are more than 150 cenotes in the system.
Glyptotherium is a genus of glyptodont in the family Chlamyphoridae that lived from the Early Pliocene, about 3.6 million years ago, to the Late Pleistocene, around 15,000 years ago. It had a wide distribution, living in the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, Venezuela, and Brazil. The genus was first described in 1903 by American paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn with the type species being, G. texanum, based on fossils that had been found in the Pliocene Blancan Beds in Llano Estacado, Texas, USA. Glyptotherium fossils have since been unearthed from many more fossil sites, from Florida to Colombia. Another species, G. cylindricum, was named in 1912 by fossil hunter Barnum Brown on the basis of a partial skeleton that had been unearthed from the Pleistocene deposits in Jalisco, Mexico. The two species differ in several aspects, including age, with G. texanum being from the older Early Pliocene to Early Pleistocene strata, whereas G. cylindricum is exclusive to the Late Pleistocene.
Muzquizopteryx is a genus of nyctosaurid pterodactyloid pterosaur from the Late Cretaceous period of what is now Coahuila, Mexico.
Eve of Naharon is the skeleton of a 20– to 25-year-old human female found in the Naharon section of the underwater cave Sistema Naranjal in Mexico near the town of Tulum, around 80 miles (130 km) south west of Cancún. The Naranjal subsystem is a part of the larger Sistema Ox Bel Ha. The skeleton is carbon dated to 13,600 years ago, which makes it one of the oldest documented human finds in the Americas.
Catonyx is an extinct genus of ground sloth of the family Scelidotheriidae, endemic to South America during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs. It lived from 2.5 Ma to about 10,000 years ago, existing for approximately 2.49 million years. The most recent date obtained is about 9600 B.P.
Ahytherium is an extinct genus of megalonychid sloth that lived during the Pleistocene of what is now Brazil. It contains a single species, A. aureum.
Piauhytherium is an extinct genus of herbivorous notoungulate mammal of the family Toxodontidae. It lived during the Late Pleistocene; fossils have been found in Brazil. The only known species is Piauhytherium capivarae.
Chan Hol, part of the Toh ha cave system, is a cenote and submerged cave system in Quintana Roo, Mexico, of interest to paleoanthropologists. The remains of three prehistoric human fossils were discovered within the cave system. Along with Eve of Naharon, Naia, the Man of El Templo and the Woman of Las Palmas, the three fossils at Chan Hol are among several ancient Paleoamerican skeletons found in the submerged cave systems of the Yucatán Peninsula around Tulum, Quintana Roo.
Nohochichak is an extinct genus of megalonychid ground sloth from the Late Pleistocene (Rancholabrean) of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
Panthera balamoides is a species described as an extinct species of the big cat genus Panthera that is known from a single fossil found in a Late Pleistocene age cenote in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. P. balamoides has only a single reported specimen, the distal end of a right humerus, that is notably of exceptional size for a felid. It was unearthed in 2012 from an underwater cave and described in 2019 by an international group of paleontologists from Mexico and Germany led by Sarah R. Stinnesbeck. However, several authors have since proposed that the fossil comes from an ursid, possibly the extinct Arctotherium, and not of felid affinities.
Hells Bells are hollow bell- or cone-shaped structures of carbonate that can reach lengths of 2 metres. They are found underwater in El Zapote cenote in Quintana Roo, Mexico, on the Yucatan Peninsula; similar formations exist in other caves. In a certain depth range, such structures cover the entire surface of the cave including submerged tree trunks and other Hells Bells, although they never touch each other.
Parocnus is an extinct genus of sloth native to Cuba and Hispaniola, belonging to the family Megalocnidae. It was a terrestrial ground sloth, being the second largest Caribbean sloth after Megalocnus.
Meizonyx is an extinct genus of megalonychid ground sloth from the Pleistocene of El Salvador and southern Mexico. The type and only species, Meizonyx salvadorensis, was described in 1985 from a mandible found in Barranca del Sisimico and other remains found at Rio Tomayate in El Salvador considered to be Middle Pleistocene in age. Later, in 2021, two partial skeletons were described from Late Pleistocene aged deposits in Sistema Huautla cave in, Oxaca, Mexico, with one of these dating to around 12,562 ± 130 years Before Present. It is considered closely related to Xibalbaonyx. It is thought to be comparable or somewhat greater in size than Megalonyx jeffersonii. It inhabited relatively mountainous areas.
Ortotherium is a genus of megalonychid ground sloth from the Late Miocene Ituzaingó Formation of Entre Rios Province, Argentina. Although many species were described, the only valid species of the genus is Ortotherium laticurvatum, with many species being junior synonyms. Ortotherium is known from very fragmentary material, all of which is material from the mandible and teeth. The holotype of O. laticurvatum consists of an incomplete left dentary that had been unearthed from a series of sediments known as ‘Conglomerado osifero’ in Paraná, Argentina. Argentina paleontologist Florentino Ameghino named the species in 1885, though he would go on to name four more, invalid, species of the genus. One species however, O. brevirostrum, has been reclassified as Mesopotamocnus.
