Museum Large White River Eporeodon major Skull

Eporeodon major

Class Mammalia, Order Artiodactyla, Suborder Oreodonta, Family Oreodontidae

Geological Time: Oligocene – (35 million years ago)

Size: The skull is 240 mm in length

Fossil Site: Upper Brule Formation, White River Badlands, Chadron Nebraska Area


Eporeodon majorDescription: This is the largest and most pristine skull that I have yet offered. The dentition is awesome. Three of the four canines are fully intact; and the incisors and molars are fully in place. Believe me; you wouldn’t want to have tangled with this growling, nasty little beast when it roamed the grasslands and plains of ancient America. The skull is solid and heavy in the hand. It most certainly would be a centerpiece for a private collection, or, museum display grade fossil.

The badlands of the western US are particularly rich in mammal fossils from the late Eocene to Miocene. The Brule Formation is exposed over a huge area including Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado, and yields abundant fossils as layers are eroded. This diverse group of stocky prehistoric mammals grazed amid the grasslands, prairies or savannas of North and Central America throughout much of the Cenozoic era.Oreodont

Oreodonta is an extinct mammal distantly related to pigs, hogs, camels, hippopotamuses, and the pig-like peccaries. Over 50 species of Oreodonta have been described. They first appeared some 50 million years ago during the warm Eocene and were widely prevalent during the Oligocene in the grasslands, prairies or savannas of what is now the North American badlands. The Oreodonts mysteriously disappeared some four million years ago during the Pliocene. Today, fossil jaws and teeth of the Oreodonta are commonly found in the White River badlands in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wyoming. Oreodonts have a unique place in the evolution of ruminant teeth and with peccary-like attributes. Oreodonts are Artiodactyls, even toed ungulates, sometimes called a cross between a pig and a sheep. Note that they have both large canine front teeth, but also molars for chewing plants. They were herding animals and grazers, eating mostly grasses. They averaged three to four feet long.

click fossil pictures to enlarge


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