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Oreodont descendants: hippos and desmostylians to scale

Monday, September 7, 2026 11:22

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According to Academia and Wikipedia:
“An oreodont [Merycoidodontoidea, 35 to 5mya] is an extinct, sheep-sized hoofed mammal that lived in North America between 40 million and 5.3 million years. All scholars agree, however, that the oreodont was an early form of even-toed ungulate, belonging to the order Artiodactyla. The group has traditionally been placed within the Suina (pigs, peccaries and their ancestors), though some recent work suggests they may have been more closely related to camels.”

By contrast
in the large reptile tree (LRT, 2340 taxa) creodonts are basal to hippos and desmostylians (Fig 1) and by way of desmostylians: mysticetes. Oreodonts were river-dwellers. Hippos are and were river dwellers. Desmostylans and mysticetes are and were marine dwellers.

So hippos and mysticetes are large living oreodonts.
That means creodonts are not extinct.
In the LRT pigs and camels are close to one another. Neither are close to oreodonts, hippos, desmostylians and mysticetes.

Figure 1. The creodont, Merycoidon, and its descendants: hippos and desmostylians, to scale. Click to enlarge.

AI reports,
“They [oreodonts] looked like a cross between a pig, a sheep, and a camel.”

That’s not a good answer. Evolution does not work by ‘crossing’ taxa.

Figure 2. Skeletons of Merycoidodon and Aumelasia to scale and enlarged for comparison.

Tiny Aumelasia
(Fig 2) is an ancestral taxon to the oreodonts in the LRT.

References
living-off-the-land-the-oreodonts-of-north-america
wiki/Merycoidodontoidea
wiki/Tylopoda

Russel Hawley discusses oreodonts on YouTube

Source: https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/2026/09/07/oreodont-descendants-hippos-and-desmostylians-to-scale/

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