PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON lll(2):425-435. 1998. Taxonomy and distribution of Daeodon, an Oligocene-Miocene entelodont (Mammalia: Artiodactyla) from North America Spencer G. Lucas, Robert J. Emry, and Scott E. Foss (SGL) New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, 1801 Mountain Road N. W., Albuquerque, New Mexico 87104 U.S.A.; (RJE) Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 20560 U.S.A.; (SEF) Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois 60115-2861 U.S.A. Abstract. — Dinohyus Peterson, 1906, the widely used generic name of the giant Oligocene-Miocene entelodont from North America, is a junior subjective synonym of Daeodon Cope, 1879. Ammodon Marsh, 1893 also is a junior subjective synonym of Daeodon. Five species have been named that we assign to Daeodon; D. shoshonensis Cope, 1879, D. leidyanus (Marsh, 1893), D. mento (Allen, 1926), D. hollandi (Peterson, 1905b), and D. minor (Loomis, 1932), and we tentatively consider all to represent a single species, D. sho-shonensis Cope, 1879. The type material of D. leidyanus, from the basal Kirk-wood Formation near Farmingdale, New Jersey is of early Miocene (late Ari-kareean) age. Other Daeodon occurrences range in age from late Oligocene (Arikareean) to early Miocene (Hemingfordian). Entelodontidae is a family of Holarctic Eocene-Miocene suiform artiodactyls. En-telodonts were always among the largest ar-tiodactyls of their times, and the later forms became gigantic, some with skulls nearly one meter long. They appeared in North America during the late Eocene (Duches-nean) as immigrants from Asia (Brunet 1979, Emry 1981, Lucas 1992) and became relatively conspicuous members of latest Eocene-early Oligocene (Chadronian-Orel-lan) mammalian fossil assemblages in the western United States. They persisted through the late Oligocene into the early Miocene (Whitneyan-Hemingfordian) be-fore becoming extinct. The giant genus, usually called Dinohyus, represents a later lineage of Asian entelodonts that immigrat-ed into North America near the end of the Oligocene (Brunet 1979), and became geo-graphically widespread in the early Mio-cene, though apparently never abundant. Peterson (1905b) named Dinohyus for complete skeletal material from Nebraska that he later monographed (Peterson 1909). However, an entelodont from the Miocene of Oregon, Daeodon Cope, 1879, belongs to the same genus as Dinohyus and thus has priority. Furthermore, Ammodon Marsh, 1893, from the Miocene of New Jersey, also is a synonym of Daeodon. The purpose of this article is to establish the synonymy of Daeodon, Ammodon and Dinohyus and to summarize the distribution of Daeodon, which had a broad range in the United States (Fig. 1). Abbreviations used. — In this article, AM refers to Amherst Museum, Amherst Uni-versity, Amherst; AMNH to the American Museum of Natural History; CM to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pitts-burgh; LACM to the Natural History Mu-seum of Los Angeles County; MCZ to the Museum of Comparative Zoology of Har-vard University, Cambridge; UNSM to the University of Nebraska State Museum, Lin-coln; SDSM to the South Dakota School of Mines, Rapid City; TMM to the Texas Me-morial Museum, Austin; UCMP to the Uni-versity of California Museum of Paleontol-
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