Suina
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The suborder Suina (also known as Suiformes) contains perhaps the earliest and most archaic even-toed ungulates.
However, there are only three families alive today:
- Family Suidae (pigs, hogs)
- Family Tayassuidae (peccaries)
- Family Hippopotamidae (hippopotami) - currently disputed (see Cetartiodactyla)
The oreodonts of the possibly-ancestral family Oreodontidae (best known for the genus Oreodon, a.k.a. Merycoidodon) are now extinct. Sometimes called "ruminating hogs," they were pig-like, cud-chewing plant-eaters with tusk-like canine teeth, short faces, and four-toed hooves. Although some scholars place them within the suborder Suina, others put them in their own suborder, named Oreodonta.
These prehistoric artiodactyls were very common amid the dry grasslands of North and Central America throughout much of the Cenozoic era. Their teeth are often found as fossils amid the Oreodon beds in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wyoming.
The primordial oreodonts appeared 48 million years ago (m.y.a.) during the Eocene epoch of the Paleogene period, but became extinct 4 m.y.a. during the early Pliocene epoch of the Neogene period. It is not known whether they were ancestral to the living genera of Suina.
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