Ammodon leidyanum, named by Cope's rival, O. Since 1945, it had been suggested that two other taxa were actually junior synonyms of Daeodon, but the formalization of this referral didn't take place until the work of Lucas et al. Several other species were assigned to the genus in the subsequent decades, like D. shohonensis, which is based on a fragment of a lower jaw from the John Day Formation of Oregon. Although not specified in Cope's original description, the name Daeodon comes from the Greek words daios, meaning 'hostile' or 'dreadful' and odon, meaning 'teeth'. However, the existence of distinct specimens of Archaeotherium showing characters reminiscent of those present in both Paraentelodon and Daeodon raises the possibility of both genera actually descending from a North American common ancestor. The exact relationships between Daeodon and other entelodonts are not well understood some authors (Lucas et al., 1998) consider the greater morphological similarity of Daeodon to Paraentelodon rather than to earlier North American entelodonts, like Archaeotherium, as evidence for Daeodon being a descendant from a Late Oligocene immigration of large Asian entelodonts to North America. This led to Daeodon 's reclassification as a member of the family Entelodontidae. This classification persisted until the description of ' Elotherium' calkinsi in 1905, a very similar and much more complete animal from the same rocks, which was promptly assigned as a species of Daeodon by Peterson (1909). He classified it as a perissodactyl and thought that it was closely related to Menodus. The genus Daeodon was erected by the American anatomist and paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope in 1878. Some authors synonymize it with Dinohyus hollandi and several other species (see below), but due to the lack of diagnostic material, this is questionable at best.Īnother large member of this family, similar in size to Daeodon, is the Asian Paraentelodon, but it is known by very incomplete material. The type species is Daeodon shoshonensis, described by a very questionable holotype by Cope. See text for nomenclature historyĭaeodon is an extinct genus of entelodont even-toed ungulates that inhabited North America about 23 to 20 million years ago during the latest Oligocene and earliest Miocene. Daeodon (Dinohyus) hollandi, complete skeleton from the Agate Springs Fossil Quarry in Nebraska.

Daeodon prehistoric kingdom wiki