Mixtotherium is an extinct genus of Palaeogene artiodactyls belonging to the monotypic family Mixtotheriidae. Known informally as mixtotheriids or mixtotheres, these artiodactyls were endemic to western Europe and occurred from the middle to late Eocene. The genus and type species were both first established by the French naturalist Henri Filhol in 1880. Several species are well known by good skull fossils, which were informative enough to allow for classifications of the species to their own family. The Mixtotheriidae, first recognized by Helga Sharpe Pearson in 1927, is currently known by 7 valid species, although M. priscum is thought by several authors to be synonymous with M. gresslyi. The affinities of the Mixtotheriidae in relation to other artiodactyl families is uncertain, but it is currently thought to have been related to the Cainotherioidea and Anoplotheriidae.
Mixtotherium
The Mixtotheriidae is thought to be closely related to the Cainotheriidae, including Cainotherium (skeleton at Natural History Museum of Basel)
Rock hyrax (Procavia capensis) skull, National Museum of Natural History. The mandibular rami of hyraxes are wide similar to those of Mixtotherium.
M. priscum mandible, Natural History Museum of Basel
Dacrytherium is an extinct genus of Palaeogene artiodactyls belonging to the family Anoplotheriidae. It occurred from the middle to late Eocene of western Europe and is the type genus of the subfamily Dacrytheriinae, the older of the two anoplotheriid subfamilies. Dacrytherium was first erected in 1876 by the French palaeontologist Henri Filhol, who recognized in his studies that it had dentition similar to the anoplotheriids Anoplotherium and Diplobune but differed from them by a deep preorbital fossa, where the genus name derives from. Since then, there are currently four valid species within the genus, of which D. ovinum is the type species.
Dacrytherium
Portrait of Henri Filhol, who erected the genus Dacrytherium in 1876 and gave more thorough descriptions of it in 1877
Upper skull of the closely related Anoplotherium commune, National Museum of Natural History, France. Note the lack of any preorbital fossa unlike that of Dacrytherium.
Endocranial cast of the related Diplobune, State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart