What Were Prehistoric 'Hell Pigs'?

Enormous, pig-like omnivores with bone-barbed faces and long tusks once hunted and fought throughout what's now North America, Eurasia, and Africa. Learn about the entelodonts in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/extinct-animals/prehistoric-hell-pigs-once-roamed-earth.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogelbaum. Here in nineteen ninety nine, researchers found what
looked suspiciously like a meat cash. The Society for Vertebrate
Paleontology had been given a report on a strange bone

(00:22):
bed found near Douglas, Wyoming. Huddled together in a big
pile were the fossilized skeletons of at least six different
extinct North American camels. Compared to the humpbacked beasts of
burden we know today, these were relatively small, about the
size of domestic sheep. The skeletons at this particular site

(00:42):
were deposited around thirty three point four million years ago.
Many of the specimens had retained their heads, necks, ribcages,
and front legs, but the back legs and hips. In
other words, the camel's meaty hindquarters were missing. Oh what's more, distinctive,
tooth marks riddled the bones. The evidence suggests that the

(01:04):
pile of camel remains might have been a prehistoric meat locker,
a cash where some predators had dragged and stored their prey.
A look at the region's fossil record revealed that there
was a killer beast alive back then whose teeth perfectly
matched those gnarly bite marks. Its name is Archaetherium. Weighing

(01:26):
an estimated six hundred pounds or about two hundred and
seventy kilos, and measuring four and a half feet tall
of the shoulder that's one and a half meters, this
creature would have been a sight to see. It walked
on cloven hoofs, Its legs were long and thin, There
were bony knobs on its jawbones, and the animal's lengthy
snout was full of crushing teeth. Archaeotherium belonged to a

(01:51):
group of omnivores the patrolled Eurasia, North America, and Africa
for millions of years. These were the terrifying inteledonts. Intelliedants
have definitely won the awesome nickname sweepstakes. They're sometimes, if informally,
called hell pigs or terminator pigs of porkine as these

(02:12):
creatures might appear, though they're classified in a different taxonomical
family than modern pigs. Opinions have varied over where they
belong on the mammalian family tree. Everyone agrees that intellidants
wore arteodactyls, the order that includes whales and all of
the hooked mammals with an even number of toes, like camels, goats,

(02:34):
and hippos. What's up for debate is their placement inside
that group. Scientists used to think that pigs represent the
intelliedant's closest living relatives, but that's no longer the consensus.
A two thousand and nine paper concluded that these beasties
were actually more akin to hippos and whales. A more

(02:55):
than fifty intelligant species have come to light. The oldest
that we're aware of rooted around China roughly thirty eight
million years ago, shortly after the group made its way
to North America. Early varieties tended to have short snouts,
but within a few million years natural selection lengthened their

(03:15):
upper and lower jaws. Though the intelligents started out small,
huge ones quickly arrived on the scene. Archaethereum was one
of the first truly large intellidonts, but by no means
was it the biggest. As recently as eighteen million years ago,
the Great Plains of North America were home to the
towering Dayodon. At its shoulder this animal stood just under

(03:39):
seven feet in height that's about two meters. Scientists think
it could have tipped the scales at nine hundred and
thirty pounds, or more so, over four hundred and thirty kilos.
Daidon's head alone was three feet or a meter long.
To support its weighty skull, the creature had powerful neck
muscles connected to arches on the vertebra in its shoulder area,

(04:03):
so like a bison or white rhino, it may have
had a visible hump on its back. Your typical inteledont
mouth had a combination of long canine tusks and blunt
cheek teeth. A no living mammal has quite the same
arrangement of pearly whites. A. Judging by the anatomy of
these snout and the bony surfaces where the jaw muscles

(04:24):
would have been anchored, it's clear that inteloedants could open
their mouths quite widely, and if the size of those
muscle attachment points are any indication, the larger, long snouted
hell pigs delivered powerful bites alike today's pigs and teleedants
were almost certainly omnivores, aware marks on their teeth suggest

(04:46):
the animals spent a lot of time gnawing on bones.
Paleontologists speculate that inteloedants were efficient scavengers that probably took
down live prey as well. Hard roots, eggs, fruits, and
vegetation may have also played an importan role in their diets.
But inteledant teeth weren't just reserved for meal time. Gouge

(05:07):
like tooth marks have been found on some intelligant skulls.
A puncture wounds and healed over scratches, sometimes measuring almost
an inch or two centimeters deep, tell us that the
animals occasionally fought by biting each other's faces. A few
animals bear tusque injuries around their eyes. However, being able

(05:27):
to intimidate your rivals is also an important skill for
many territorial mammals. That might explain why so many intelligants
had long, flaring cheek bones projecting from the sides of
their heads. Another hypothesis is that these two were muscle
anchoring points. In addition, numerous species possessed bony knobs on
the undersides of their jaws that could have played roles

(05:49):
in intimidation or one on one combat. The last intelligants
died out about sixteen million years ago. No one knows
why they when extinct, but the spread of new equally
massive mam million predators could have had something to do
with it, like the also now extinct bear dogs, but

(06:10):
they're a different episode. Today's episode is based on the
article scary prehistoric hell pigs once roam to the Earth
on how stuffworks dot Com, written by Mark Mancini. Green
Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks
dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four more
podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

(06:34):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.