| Pantodonta Temporal range: Paleocene–Oligocene |
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| Barylambda | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Subphylum: | Vertebrata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Infraclass: | Eutheria |
| Superorder: | Laurasiatheria |
| Order: | Cimolesta |
| Suborder: | Pantodonta Cope, 1873 |
| Families | |
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The Pantodonta are an order (or, according to some, a suborder) of now extinct placental mammals. Pantodonts are well known from the Paleocene of North America and Asia, and one early genus Alcidedorbignya, that was found in the Paleocene of South America. Pantodonts started out cat-sized in the early Paleocene, but by early Eocene, they had become cow-sized herbivores, the largest land mammals of their time. Then they abruptly died out by the middle Eocene.
In the past, the species now classified as Pantodonta were, together with the Dinocerata and the Xenungulata species, unified in one order: the Amblypoda (which means "blunt foot"). But this old classification turned out to be incorrect, and the species it contained were reclassified into three separate orders. Note that a Cimolestan origin of Dinoceratans may still hold some truth.
Regardless, the pantodonts were almost certainly related to the Carnivora and pangolins and they are sometimes classified as a suborder of Cimolesta.