Teeth analysis reveals that North America’s giant ‘hell pig’ may have been crushing bones like a lion 30 million years ago

North America’s giant “hell pigs” may have been munching on bones some 30 million years ago, while smaller pigs were tearing through softer substances like meat, a new study has found.

The “hell pigs,” scientifically known as archaeotherium (Greek for “ancient beast”), were a group of pig-like creatures that could be as tall as a human when standing on four legs and weigh more than 2,000 pounds (1,000 kilograms).

Researchers have known about Archaeotherium since 1850. But now, new tooth analysis reveals that these beasts’ feeding strategies were more diverse than previously thought. By examining tooth wear, the researchers found that larger species may have been crushing bones and other hard materials, while smaller species may have sheared soft foods, potentially giving them different roles in the ancient North American landscape.

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“It’s inconceivable that they were doing the same thing,” Bryn Wooten, a doctoral candidate at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, told Live Science.

Wooten presented preliminary results of the study on Thursday (Nov. 13) at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology’s 2025 Annual Meeting. The findings have not yet been peer-reviewed, as Wooten and his colleagues still need to complete their research and submit it to a journal.

pig whale

Archaeotherium roamed throughout North America from about 37 million years ago to 23 million years ago. Despite its vaguely pig-like appearance, Archaeotherium was more closely related to whales and hippos than to pigs. Their heads were about 30% of their total length (depending on the species), but their small brains meant they weren’t the brightest tools in Paleozoic huts.

“Archaeotherium was a very unintelligent creature with a brain-to-body mass ratio similar to that of reptiles,” Wooten said. “Their heads were huge, but their brains had tiny cases.”

Researchers have previously suggested that Archaeotherium may have been an active predator, scavenger, and/or devegetator. Bite marks on fossils of Poebrotherium, a small relative of camels that once roamed North America, indicate that Archaeotherium may have hunted Poebrotherium and kept some of its carcasses as leftovers.

For the new study, Wooten and Larisa DeSantis, an associate professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University, examined the teeth of different Archaeotheriums from different states, including Nebraska, South Dakota, Oregon, and Colorado. By using dental microwear texture analysis, which uses a powerful microscope to create 3D scans of tooth surfaces, they were able to compare wear changes between teeth of different Archaeotherium.

Overall, Archaeotherium typically resembled a peccary (a pig-like animal that lives in the Americas) that reaps its food. However, the wear of larger-bodied archaeotherium was statistically indistinguishable from that of lions and hyenas, and was the imprint of animals that crushed their food.

“It’s very interesting that even large objects can break bones,” DeSantis told Live Science. Small ones are different.

The researchers suggested that this crushing and wear could mean that larger species were engaged in more predatory behavior, using their bulk to bully other predators away from prey. The larger Archeopteryx, on the other hand, may have consumed harder vegetarian foods, such as tubers and woody plants. Leaves and grasses may have been the soft vegetable option for the small Archaeotherium.

So far, tooth analysis has only revealed the texture of Archeotherium’s food, not which species it ate. Wooten will now consider other research methods, such as calcium isotope analysis, to confirm whether the bones were part of Archaeotherium’s diet.