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Brontotheres Temporal range: Eocene
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Megacerops skeleton at the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Mammalia |
Order: | Perissodactyla |
Family: | †Brontotheriidae Marsh, 1873 |
Genera | |
See text | |
Synonyms | |
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Brontotheriidae is a family of extinct mammals belonging to the order Perissodactyla, the order that includes horses, rhinoceroses, and tapirs. Superficially, they looked rather like rhinos with some developing bony nose horns, and were some of the earliest mammals to have evolved large body sizes of several tonnes. They lived around 56–34 million years ago, until the very close of the Eocene. Brontotheres had a Holarctic distribution, with the exception of Western Europe: they occupied North America, Asia, and Eastern Europe.[1] They were the first fossilized mammals to be discovered west of the Mississippi, and were first discovered in South Dakota.[2]