Your Daily Fossil

Archaeotherium - The Hell Pig

Mounted specimen on display at the American Museum of Natural History, NYC

When: Oligocene (38-25 million years ago)

Where: North America 

What: Archaeotherium was one of the ferocious predators of the North American Oligocene. This nasty animal stood 4 feet (~1.2 meters) at the shoulder and weighed up to 600 lbs (~270 kilos). It was a dominate predator in its time, hunting animals much larger than itself. Numerous skeletons of rhinoceros relatives have been found with tooth marks on the bone which line up exactly with Archaeotherium dentition. Some skulls of Archaeotherium have simular markings upon them, suggesting these animals fought with one another quite often. In the reconstruction above a pack of them have successively hunted several Poebrotherium, a relative of camels. 

Archaeotherium  has been called the ‘hell pig’ or ‘giant boar’. This animal did fill an ecological niche very simular to that of wild boars today, hunting vertebrate prey and supplementing their diet with plant material. However, it is not in the pig family, but a member of the extinct group Entelodontidae. This group is within the larger clade Artiodactyla (even toed ungulates) but they are more closely related to hippos and whales than to pigs.