Daeodon – Late Oligocene-Early Miocene (29-19 Ma)As I said last time we went to Mammal Junction, a l

Daeodon – Late Oligocene-Early Miocene (29-19 Ma)As I said last time we went to Mammal Junction, a lot of mammalsfrom the prehistoric Cenozoic are similar to mammals we have now, or look kindof like a generic mammal. Some of them, though, weren’t. Some were absolutelypositively bizarre. Let’s talk about one.This ugly motherfucker is named Daeodon, and lived in North America during the Paleogene-Neogenedivide.  Daeodon—and other entelodonts, by extension—is essentially what itlooks like. It’s a carnivorous ungulate, or, hoofed mammal. No surprises here,other than the fact it existed. Today, the only ungulates who eat meat arewhales1. Ungulates make up most of the large land mammals today, andthey’re all big grazers. Daeodon andits cousins, however, were apex predators.If you’ve seen Walkingwith Beasts, Daeodon might look familiar to you. A similar animal appearsin the third episode, “Land of Giants,” called an “entelodont.” That one livedin central Asia and probably belonged the genus Entelodon. If you’ve seen the documentary, you certainly remembermaybe the most gruesome scene in the entire franchise, where a territorialfight between two of them leads to one’s face being fucked right up. Even as a violence-loving kid that one kind of made meshudder. But even though Walkingwith tends to sensationalize its animals, that wasn’t really the case thistime. They were probably a lot like that. Aggressive, terrifying, and ugly as hell. Iwanted to give them a little more fur, though, since I personally don’t believethey were naked like a domestic pig. They’ve been nicknamed “Hell pigs” or “Terminatorpigs” and I find it hard to disagree. They had big-ass heads and powerful jaws with pairs of hugecanines and incisors, along with batteries of tough, blunt molars. This mixtureof teeth is, weird as it probably sounds, sorta convergent with ours. Sharp front teeth and dull, rounded teeth in the back? These were theteeth of an omnivore. They fed themselves with a mix of scavenging and activehunting, and probably rounded out their diet with roots and tubers, an echo oftheir relationship with other hooved animals. They’re like a concept for ahorror movie character. It’s like Kujofor pigs, I think. I don’t know much about Kujoother than the fact that Stephen King was inebriatedwhen he wrote it and doesn’t even remember doing so.It’s important to mention that they weren’t actually pigs,although we used to think some of them were. They’re the weird cousin pigs don’ttalk about. Paleontologists like to disagree on how closely they were relatedto pigs and other artiodactyls (even-toed ungulates). I did a lot of digging to see where they mightfall, and the general consensus looks like “somewhere around hippos and whales2.”More about this genus specifically, Daeodon was the largest member of the entelodont family, being abit taller than the average grown man. I am really glad I don’t live alongsidethese things. One specimen was originally named Dinohyus, which means “terrible pig.” It’s thought that Daeodon, more than other entelodonts,was mostly a scavenger. It followed other carnivores around and waited for themto kill something, then got in there and screamed at them until they ran away.These were huge animals with mouths full of sharp teeth; it probably wasn’t toohard for them to terrify their fellow meatboys.Daeodon is alsointeresting because it’s kind of a tangle in the entelodont family tree. Firstof all: entelodonts are found pretty evenly in Eurasia and North America. So,there’s a cousin of Daeodon who livedin the same region of North America, a few million years earlier, called Archaeotherium. I actually almost talkedabout that one today instead. The obvious conclusion there is that Daeodon is descended from Archaeotherium, right? And that was theidea for a long time. But, looking closer, we found that it looks more like itscousins on the other side of the Pacific. It might be descended from animmigrant population of entelodonts who crossed over from Asia. Wack. This leads to some questions, like, were the entelodonts inAmerica just worse at being entelodonts? Did these guys come over the land bridgeand just outcompete them? It’s really hard to say, since most animals aren’tfossilized and it’s totally possible they coexisted with native entelodonts andwe just haven’t found them. Of course, they might also just be descended fromAmerican entelodonts and happened to develop convergent traits with theircousins across the pond. Listen, this science is a total disaster sometimes. We’redoing the best we can with piles of bones we find in the dirt.So, yeah, that’s Daeodon,the murder “pig.” The Cenozoic is still full of surprises for us. A lot of theanimals that didn’t survive to modern times are absolutely buckwild, and ifthis one doesn’t prove that, I’ll need to try harder. I mean, even if it doesconvince you, there’s still some weird shit out there that I’d love to cover.And that’s why I’m here!P.S. If you haven’t seen Walkingwith Beasts, I highly recommend it. It’s the passion project of the Walking with team, and probably the mostaccurate installment of the three.1Whalesevolved from ungulates, and so are considered members of that group even thoughthey have no gotdamn legs2 If any ofmy readers know more about the relationship between entelodonts and otherartiodactyls, please let me know. I’m not certain that I’m right on this and I’dlove clarification -- source link

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