Eomellivora

Eomellivora is an extinct genus of prehistoric mustelids, closely related to the honey badger, known from Eurasia and North America, and tentatively Africa. It was one of the biggest mustelids ever known, bigger and more hypercarnivorous than the modern wolverine.^[1]

Eomellivora Temporal range: Miocene, 11–5 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N
Eomellivora piveteaui mandible
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Carnivora
Family:	Mustelidae
Genus:	†Eomellivora Zdansky, 1924
Type species
†Eomellivora wimani Zdansky, 1924
Other species
Eomellivora fricki (Pia, 1939) Eomellivora hungarica Kretzoi, 1942 Eomellivora ursogulo (Orlov, 1947) Eomellivora piveteaui Ozansoy, 1965 Eomellivora? tugenensis Morales & Pickford, 2005
Synonyms
Hadrictis fricki Pia, 1939 Perunium ursogulo Orlov, 1947

Taxonomy

Comparison of Eomellivora species

Eomellivora was long thought to contain only one species, E. wimani, with Wolsan and Semenov (1996) treating E. piveteaui as a younger subspecies of E. wimani, but new remains of E. piveteaui described in 2015 allowed for recognition of E. piveteaui as distinct from E. wimani, but also treatment of E. ursogulo (Orlov, 1948) and E. hungarica Kretzoi, 1942 from the eastern Paratethys region. The placement of the African species Eomellivora tugenensis in Eomellivora is tentative.^[1][2] The genus Hadrictis Pia, 1939, described from a skull found in Late Miocene deposits in Austria, is a junior synonym of Eomellivora.^[3]

Palaeoecology

E. piveteaui was a cursorial carnivore that consumed meat and bones.^[4]