Palaeonictis ("ancient weasel") is an extinct genus of placental mammals from extinct subfamily Palaeonictinae within extinct family Oxyaenidae, that lived in Europe and North America from the late Paleocene to the early Eocene.
Description
In life, it would have resembled a large modern
wolverine. This predatory mammal had heavy jaws and blunt robust teeth more suited for crushing bones, than slicing meat. This meant that the plantigrade
Palaeonictis was at least a part-time scavenger. The biggest species,
Palaeonictis peloria (meaning "terrible ancient weasel") is known from an incomplete jaw that must have measured over in length. This animal was the largest carnivore in its ecosystem. ,
P. occidentalis (the size of a bear) evolved into the smaller
P. wingi (the size of a coyote) within 200,000 years in the early Eocene due to global warming (
paleoclimatology). By the end of the early Eocene (),
Palaeonictis disappeared from North America, and by the early Eocene () the last species of
P. gigantea had vanished from Europe.
In fact, the entire family Oxyaenidae had become extinct worldwide (although its sister group
Hyaenodonta continued to thrive for a while). This is traditionally assumed to be due to increased competition from
Miacidae and
Nimravidae belonging to the more successful order
Carnivora, which eventually replaced earlier carnivorous mammal clades in the later
Neogene as the world's top predators, though no evidence of direct competition is known, and carnivorans may have simply filled vacated niches.
