ENTELODONT

Scientific classification Kingdom:Animalia Phylum:Chordata Class:Mammalia Order:Artiodactyla (unranked):Cetancodontamorpha Family:†Entelodontidae Lydekker, 1883 Genera †Archaeotherium †Brachyhyops †Cypretherium †Daeodon †Entelodon †Eoentelodon †Paraentelodon †Proentelodon Synonyms Elotheridae

Entelodonts, sometimes nicknamed hell pigs or terminator pigs, is an extinct family of pig-like omnivores endemic to forests and plains of North America, Europe, and Asia from the middle Eocene to early Miocene epochs (37.2—16.3 mya), existing for approximately 20.9 million years.

Taxonomy Entelodontidae was named by Richard Lydekker and assigned to Nonruminantia by Gregory (1910). Then assigned to Artiodactyla by Lucas et al. (1998); and to Entelodontoidea by Carroll (1988) and Boisserie et al. (2005). While entelodonts have long been classified as members of the Suina, Spaulding et al. have found them to be closer to whales and hippos than to pigs.

Morphology

Entelodonts are an extinct group of rather pig-like omnivorous mammals with bulky bodies but short, slender legs, and long muzzles. The largest were the North American Daeodon shoshonensis, the Entelodon and the Eurasian Paraentelodon intermedium, standing up to 2.1 metres (6.9 ft) tall at-shoulder, with brains the size of an orange.

Body mass

A single specimen was recorded by M. Mendoza, C. M. Janis, and P. Palmqvist for body mass and was estimated to have a weight of 421 kg (930 lb).

Dentition and Anatomy

Entelodonts had a full set of teeth, including large canines, heavy incisors, and relatively simple, yet powerful, molars. These features suggest an omnivorous diet, similar to that of modern pigs. Like many other artiodactyls, they had cloven hooves, with two toes touching the ground, and the remaining two being vestigial The most distinguishing characteristic of the animals, however, would have been the heavy, bony lumps on either side of their heads which are similar to a warthog's. Some of these may have been attachment points for powerful jaw muscles,but some were larger in males, suggesting that they may also have had a role in competition for mates.

Lifestyle

Entelodonts lived in the forests and plains where they were the apex predators of North America's Early Miocene and Oligocene, consuming carrion and live animals and rounding off their diet with plants and tubers. They would have hunted large animals, like the cow-sized artiodactyl Eporeodon major and the sheep-sized cameloid Poebrotherium wilsoni, dispatching them with a blow from their jaws. Some fossil remains of these other animals have been found with the bite marks of entelodonts on them. Like modern day pigs, they were omnivores, eating both meat and plants, but their adaptations show a bias towards live prey and carrion. They were most likely opportunists, mainly eating live animals, but not sneering at carrion and roots and tubers in times of drought. Some entelodonts even exhibited cacheing behavior, as an Archaeotherium's cache has been discovered, made up of the remains of several early camels.

In popular culture

Entelodonts appear in the third episode of the popular BBC documentary Walking with Beasts, where in the program, the narrator always refers to the creatures as "Entelodonts," rather than a more specific genus, such as Entelodon or Archaeotherium. The same creatures appear in another BBC production the 2001 remake of The Lost World. Entelodonts were also the main focus of Episode 4 of National Geographic Channels show Prehistoric Predators in an episode titled Killer Pig. The episode featured Archaeotherium (identified as "Entelodont") as being the top predator of the American Badlands, and how it evolved into the even larger Daeodon (aka "Dinohyus").The entelodonts are one of the more common fossil animals found in the Mongolian Hsanda Gol formation. However, better preserved specimens have been found in North America.Although they are related to pigs, some of these huge beasts grew to the size of a rhino. Their jaws were massively powerful, and the bones of brontotheres and other animals show entelodont toothmarks. The most striking features of the entelodonts are the bony knobs all over their skulls. Some of these were simply for the attachment of very strong jaw muscles allowing a wide gape. Others seem to be larger in males, and their purpose was presumably the same as in modern pigs such as warthogs. The lumps were placed so as to protect the eyes and other delicate parts of the skull during fights

Question: What is the name of the giant pig-like animals in program 3?

Answer: The huge pig-like animals are entelodonts. These are extinct hoofed animals, relatives of the pigs (but not their ancestors). As with many of the Mongolian fossils their preserved remains are sketchy, and our reconstruction is based on North American material from the same time which is much better preserved. North America and Asia were connected by land at this time, but we have used the general term for the group 'entelodont' as the name for the animal we show, rather than claiming to have represented a particular species. That is why the name doesn't have a capital letter or italics.

Question: How big were the entelodonts?

Answer: The largest entelodonts had skulls 1m long and had a shoulder height about the same height as a human! They must have been terrifying beasts!

Question: How do we know the entelodonts had lumps on their faces?

Answer: The lumps on an entelodont's face were made of bone, so they are preserved in the skulls, which look like those of warthogs.

Question: How do we know what colour the entelodonts were?

Answer: We have no evidence of colour for entelodonts. Being such large animals, most of them are likely to have had sparse (or no) hair rather like large pigs today - possibly with even less hair given their size. Since many species lived together in the same area, it is possible that they had some species-specific colouration, such as coloured hair tassles or facial skin colour, to identify the different species.

Question: How do we know what the entelodonts ate?

Answer: Entelodonts' teeth are very worn and battered. They had all sorts of different teeth, and the wear on them suggests that they ate just about anything (much as some modern pigs do). Some have peculiar wear patterns on their teeth which suggest that they chewed vines and other stringy plant - this may have been to get at water in droughts.

Question: How do we know that the entelodonts fought a lot?

Answer: Skulls of entelodonts often carry injuries, and these injuries often match entelodont teeth, showing that battles between entelodonts were reasonably common, and that sometimes these resulted in serious injuries (such as 2cm deep gouges in the bone between the eyes). The bite marks suggest that one entelodont grasped anothers' snout in its mouth quite frequently. The bony lumps would have protected the delicate eyes as they do in modern pigs such as warthogs.

Question: How big was an entelodont's brain?

Answer: Entelodonts had tiny brains for such large animals - about the size of an orange in an animal almost the size of a rhino!

Question: How do we know that entelodonts weren't social?

Answer: Entelodonts had small brains, and this makes them very different from pigs, which have quite large brains, and probably means they were unlikely to be as social as pigs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=f3kFBTxYvOI

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=1_kZ1OSeZ80