Description

Oligocene

White River Formation

Douglas, WY, USA

10mm tooth (premolar) of a “bear dog”

Mammal, Amphicyonidae.

Daphoenus is an extinct genus among the”bear-dogs,” an informal term for an extinct family of carnivorans, the Amphicyonidae.  They were not dogs but were related to bears.  Daphoenus was an early member of the group and would have looked quite dog-like.  It lived in the same faunas as the early dog, Hesperocyon and both survived to the end of the Oligocene.