#oreodonts

Y'ALL!

OLIGOCENE FOSSILS!

Yellow and reddish are bone (permineralized, I think? But not fully replaced by stone) and the really dark brown is teeth!

It was pretty funny because the paleontologist was like "meh" about these fossils and I'm like "WOAH!!"

I think these are the first ancient mammal fossils I've found, thanks to the Badlands NP paleontologist showing us a spot, and the other artist in residence and I were together when we went back. This is all from maybe 1 mile of walking!

When we showed the pics to the park paleontologist, he was like, "They're not that rare, and I don't wanna fill out the paperwork to collect them, but keep sending pictures in case you do find something worth excavating!" (Even for him, there's legal red tape, so for almost anyone else, collecting them would be pretty dang illegal.)

Oreodont Skull.

Merycoidodontoidea, sometimes called "oreodonts," or "ruminating hogs", is an extinct superfamily of prehistoric cud-chewing artiodactyls with short faces and fang-like canine teeth. As their name implies, some of the better known forms were generally hog-like, and 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.