Didelphodon

Vorax lower jaw of Didelphodon

• North America

Didelphodon is a marsupial from the Cretaceous. It died out with the dinosaurs at the Cretaceous - Tertiary boundary.

Fossil remains of the animals were first found in the Lance Creek Formation in Wyoming and already described in 1889 by Othniel Charles Marsh vorax as Didelphodon. His rival Edward Drinker Cope in 1892 described a second species, Didelphodon padanicus. A third type, Didelphodon coyi, comes from the famous Horseshoe Canyon Formation and was described in 1986. All the fossils of the genus, especially jaw fragments and individual teeth, have been found in the northern Great Plains in Canada and the United States.

Features

With the size of a small house cat Didelphodon was one of the largest mammals of its time. The molars were large, massive and from tribosphenic type. They may consist of the occlusal surfaces of three cusps, which were arranged in a triangle. In the mandible, the tip of the triangle pointing outwards. Within this triangle there was a depression in which the opposing maxillary attacked with its inward-pointing triangle top. The teeth were similar to those of present-day sea otter feeds on hard-shelled prey, such as sea urchins, clams and snails. Since fossils were found by Didelphodon especially in the vicinity of river deposits, he might have had a similar nutritional strategy and a semi- aquatic lifestyle. The premolars remember to turn the bag of the devil, who eats both carrion and prey can beat up to the size of a small wallaby. Maybe Didelphodon ate carrion and hunted smaller prey.