HELL PIGS

March 14, 2020 3:30 PM

Francis Gooding, in the LRB, reviews Tim Flannery's Europe: The First Hundred Million Years and Europe's historical fauna such as: "dog-bears (bear relatives that looked like dogs), bear-dogs (dog relatives that looked like bears), large cat-like sabre-toothed hunters that were not true cats, and the most charismatic members of the Oligocene bestiary, the entelodonts, or ‘hell pigs’: each as big as a cow and equipped with huge crocodile-like jaws, a sort of ‘gigantic, hyper-carnivorous warthog’. Not actually pigs at all, they were more closely related to whales."
posted by Hypatia (15 comments total)

ENTELODONTS THAT PLOT DESTRUCTION
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 3:39 PM on March 14, 2020 [6 favorites]

Ah, man! I was hoping for illustrations.
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 3:57 PM on March 14, 2020 [5 favorites]

There were no Homo sapiens in Europe then; the Bruniquel Cave constructions were made by Neanderthals. Nobody can say what they are or what they meant, just as no one knows why other Neanderthal cave sites feature collections of bear skulls arranged into patterns.

Well I could tell, but it's a secret.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 3:59 PM on March 14, 2020 [29 favorites]

Okay, now I wanna hear more about the chibi hippopotami. Chubby sheep-sized personal house hippos.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 4:06 PM on March 14, 2020 [9 favorites]

I'm more of an entelodo than an entelodon't
posted by EndsOfInvention at 5:13 PM on March 14, 2020 [5 favorites]

That pessimism contributed greatly to their extinction.
posted by rhizome at 5:31 PM on March 14, 2020 [5 favorites]

Miniature elephants? Aw man, wish they had survived. I'm confused though by the opening paragraph where it talks about Uranium-dating the broken stalagtites, wouldn't that just yield the date the stalagtites were formed and not the date they were broken and arranged?
posted by drinkyclown at 6:35 PM on March 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

wouldn't that just yield the date the stalagtites were formed and not the date they were broken and arranged?

Presumably the outer layers were deposited around the time they were broken off. At the very least a test would indicate the earliest date at which the construction could have been made.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:28 PM on March 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: Not actually pigs at all
posted by nickmark at 7:46 PM on March 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

lol i haven't clicked on an lrb article since november but apparently i've "reached my monthly limit" somehow

i hope lrb is eaten by hellpigs
posted by poffin boffin at 2:44 AM on March 15, 2020 [2 favorites]

also i love and support the rude gay albania-invading fossil enthusiast scholar
posted by poffin boffin at 2:47 AM on March 15, 2020 [2 favorites]

Ah, man! I was hoping for illustrations.

My seven year old is in love with entelodonts. I can assure you there are more than enough videos on YouTube if you want to find them.

Also being woken up by a kid jumping on you at 6am yelling “the entelodont gets its prey” is a thing.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 6:16 AM on March 15, 2020 [6 favorites]

There were no Homo sapiens in Europe then;

As an aside, my five-year-old neighbour Marianne has let me know that humans are called “oh no sapiens.” That is curiously apropos these days.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:34 AM on March 15, 2020 [8 favorites]

> "Nobody can say what they are or what they meant"

But their legacy remains
Hewn into the living rock
Of Bruniquel
posted by kyrademon at 11:43 AM on March 15, 2020 [1 favorite]

I too am seriously dissapointed by the lack of images. Must Google.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 2:16 PM on March 15, 2020 [1 favorite]