Mesonychids

[Exalt]

So as I got into paleontology, there's a group I noticed called the Mesonychids, a group of carnivorous hoofed mammals that are no longer with us.

Their claims to fame were Andrewsarchus, viewed as the largest terrestrial mammalian carnivore once upon a time, and for being the lineage that would spawn whales.

They have lost both of these things to the ungulates since then. (Andrewsarchus is obviously still quite debated, but this thread is not about it past this point unless a stunning reversal happens.) However, google and other resources do not seem to have caught up with this: it's so hard to find anything still applicable to them. I can't even find good images of what their feet supposedly actually look like.

I'm not expecting the world here, but if anyone has any input, that would be appreciated.

[Infinity Blade]

I moved the thread to the general nature section under Prehistoric Ecosystems, as it's about an actual group of animals.

Anyway, mesonychids in general were still ungulates (whales may not be descended from them, but they are still within Ungulata), still had toes ending in hooves, still carnivorous, but still lacked any specialized shearing capabilities with their teeth (unlike modern carnivorans with their shearing carnassials). Their molars were more for crushing and the wear on their teeth reflects that (when heavily worn, they're flattened in a horizontal plane; this is not what you'd get from teeth meant for shearing) (link->).

At least some species crushed bone with their jaws, like Harpagolestes (Robson et al., 2019). You could also probably generalize them as cursorial predators (which means specialized for speed and/or endurance), although one of them (Pachyaena) was plantigrade and thought to be built more for endurance than speed (Solé et al., 2023).

[Exalt]

I didn't catch that section when I looked to make it, thanks.

EDIT: if the cladogram on wikipedia is accurate, it seems that they split off before the artiodactyl/perissodactyl split occurred. There are also a handful of species that don't seem to be categorized.