Brychotherium

Brychotherium (meaning "greedily eating beast") is an extinct genus of teratodontid hyaenodonts, a group of predatory pan-carnivoran mammals. The order name hyenadont comes from their hyena-like dentition, which refers to their carnassial-like slicing teeth and not to the bone-crushing dentition of modern spotted and brown hyenas. The family name Teratodontidae means "monstrous teeth", referring to their typically large and hypercarnivorous dentition. The genus is dated to the late Eocene, about 34 million years ago in Egypt and contains a single described species, Brychotherium ephalmos (species name meaning "pickled in brine"), named after the saline preservation conditions of the sediments in which it was found. Fossils of B. ephalmos were discovered at Locality 41 (L-41), in the Jebel Qatrani Formation of the Fayum Depression, and the genus was formally described in 2016, with B. ephalmos designated as the type species.

== Phylogeny == === Classification === The genus Brychotherium was originally coined by Patricia A. Holroyd in her 1994 doctoral dissertation, where she also coined the species Brychotherium atrox. Though doctoral dissertations do not meet ICZN requirements due to them not being validly published, and never appearing as a valid scientific name in a peer-reviewed journal article, making the genus a nomen nudum. This species is now sometimes considered part of the genus Sinopa as Sinopa atrox, but whether it truly belongs there is still uncertain. 22 years after the first coining of Brychotherium, B. ephalmos was formally designated as the type species of the genus in a paper in 2016 by Matthew R. Borths, Holroyd, and Erik R. Seiffert.