#hyracodon

Fossil Running Rhino (Hyracodon) Partial Leg - Nebraska

Planned or in the works: Dinictis, Arsinoitherium, Vasuki indicus, Perucetus, Dorudon, Palaeolagus, Gomphos, Barinasuchus

Hunter and Hunted. Gouache on board. Bernard Long. 1982.

Cenozoic Part 1

Hoplophoneus primaevus (left) attacking Hyracodon nebraskensis (right) at NHMLA. H. primaevus was a leopard sized Nimravid, a family commonly known as the false saber toothed cats, as they were neither all that close to true saber toothed cats, nor were they true cats. However, they were built similarly to cats, and filled a cat-like niche in late Eocene to the early Oligocene North America. H. nebraskensis lived alongside H. primaevus. It was a small, lightly built rhinoceros, and lived similarly to primitive horses rather than to modern rhinos. Despite its small size, it was actually very closely related to the largest known land mammal to have lived; Paraceratherium, which was another Hyracodontid (hornless rhinoceroses).

Hyracodon vertebrae. 30-25 million years old. Middle Eocene–Late Oligocene. The Hyracodon is an extinct pony-like mammal about 1.5 metres long.

Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Chordata, Class: Mammalia, Order: Perissodactyla, Family:  Hyracodontidae, Subfamily:  Hyracodontinae, Genus: Hyracodon.