In Depth Anchitherium was a genus of three toed prehistoric horse that was a browser of plants rather than a grazer of grass, something that is most easily revealed by the teeth that have much lower crowns than those of known grazing horses. This is also why Anchitherium disappeared without leaving any modern descendants because … Read more
In Depth Iranotherium was a genus of rhinoceros that was once fairly widespread across central Asia. Individuals of Iranotherium were between three and four meters long, though as with other known kinds of rhinoceroses, the males would have been larger than females. The largest males could approach sizes up to four meters long. The disappearance … Read more
In Depth Further Reading – Mammalian fauna of the upper Juntura Formation, the black butte local fauna. in The Juntura Basin: Studies in Earth History and Paleoecology. – Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 53 (1): 77. – J. A. Shotwell & D. E. Russel – 1963. – A Late Cenozoic Vertebrate Fauna from the … Read more
In Depth Further Reading – Two forms of cave lion: Middle Pleistocene Panthera spelaea fossilis Reichenau, 1906 and Upper Pleistocene Panthera spelaea spelaea Goldfuss, 1810 from the B�snik Cave, Poland – Adrian Marciszak & Krzysztof Stefaniak – 2010. – The hunted hunter: the capture of a lion (Panthera leo fossilis) at the Gran Dolina site, … Read more
In Depth Features of this cetaceans fossils indicate that Mammalodon was a baleen whale, although surprisingly it did not actually have baleen but instead well-developed teeth. Since it could not feed like baleen whales, Mammalodon must have done something different although what is uncertain. There is however one theory that suggests Mammalodon may have sifted … Read more
In Depth Although Hyaenodon translates as ‘hyena tooth’ the only similarities between Hyaenodon and hyenas are the facts that they are both mammals and they both eat meat. Beyond this they are completely different animals with hyenas being more closely related to cats and Hyaenodon actually being a creodont, a long extinct group of mammals … Read more
In Depth Mesopropithecus is currently the smallest of the known sloth lemurs although originally it was thought to have been similar to today’s modern indriid lemurs, an idea based upon comparison between the known skulls. In 1986 however, post cranial remains were found and attributed to the genus and immediately the key feature of a … Read more
In Depth Further Reading - The evolution of fossoriality and the adaptive role of horns in the Mylagaulidae (Mammalia: Rodentia), Samantha S. B. Hopkins - 2005. – A new species of Ceratogaulus from Nebraska and the evolution of nasal horns in Mylagaulidae (Mammalia, Rodentia, Aplodontioidea). – Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. – Jonathan J. M. Calede … Read more
In Depth Docodon was a small animal that lived in North America during the late Jurassic. Though known mostly from teeth and jaw material, we can tell that Docodon had very complex teeth for the time, and that these may have been used to process a variety of things from insects to seeds and other … Read more
In Depth Chonecetus is a whale genus that is usually attributed to the Aetiocetidae a group of primitive ancestors of Baleen whales. There has however been speculation that Chonecetus might be a member of the Archaeoceti, a more ancient group of toothed predatory whales that included genera such as Dorudon and Basilosaurus. If the latter … Read more