Behemotops

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Behemotops
Fossil range: Oligocene

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Desmostylia
Family:	Desmostylidae
Genus:	Behemotops Domning et al. 1986

Species

B. proteus (type)
B. katsuiei

Behemotops (Greek for "hippopotamus-looking") is an extinct genus of herbivorous marine mammals which existed from the Rupelian age to the Chattian age of the Oligocene epoch (33.9 to 23 million years ago). It was discovered on the northern Oregon coast in the early 1970s by Herculean fossil collector Douglas Emlong, and described by Daryl Domning, Clayton E. Ray and Malcolm C. McKenna in 1986^[1]. Fossils representing this genus have been found in Oregon, Washington and Hokkaidō.

Behemotops had more elephant-like tooth and jaw features than other known desmostylians from later periods. It had cusped molars that more resembled those of mastodons or other land ungulates than those of later Desmostylus, which exhibited odd "bound-pillar" shaped molars which may have evolved in response to the grit from a diet of sea-grass.^[2] Discovery of Behemotops helped place desmostylians as more closely related to proboscideans than sirenians, although relationships of this group are still poorly resolved.

[edit] References

^ D. P. Domning, C. E. Ray, and M. C. McKenna (1986). "Two new Oligocene desmostylians and a discussion of Tethytherian systematics". Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology 59:1-56.
^ Wallace, D.R (2007). Neptune's Ark: From Ichthyosaurs to Orcas. University of California Press.