Condylarths, the first hoofed mammals
Archaic ungulates dominate Paleocene faunas and give rise to almost every large mammal that follows.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 9 million years
- Known to
- ± 1 million years
- Era
- Paleocene, Cenozoic
The condylarths are less a natural group than a grade — a loose assemblage of archaic hoofed mammals that were the most abundant medium-sized herbivores of the Paleocene. From within them come the ancestors of the even-toed and odd-toed ungulates, and therefore of deer, cattle, pigs, horses, rhinos, and eventually the whales, which are artiodactyls that returned to the sea. Their teeth show a steady shift from an omnivorous ancestral pattern toward genuine plant processing, tracking the spread of angiosperm forests.