Creodonta

Creodonta ("meat teeth") is a former order of extinct carnivorous placental mammals that lived from the Early Paleocene (or Late Cretaceous) to the Late Miocene epochs in North America, Eurasia, and Africa. Originally thought to be a single group of animals ancestral to the modern Carnivora, this order is now usually considered a polyphyletic assemblage of two different groups, the oxyaenids and the hyaenodonts, not a natural group. Oxyaenids are first known from the early Paleocene of North America, while hyaenodonts hail from the late Paleocene, or Late Cretaceous, of Europe.

Creodonts were the dominant carnivorous mammals from , peaking in diversity and prevalence during the Eocene. The first large, hypercarnivorous mammals appeared with the radiation of the oxyaenids in the late Paleocene. During the Paleogene, "creodont" species were the most abundant terrestrial carnivores in the Old World. In Oligocene Africa, hyaenodonts were the dominant group of large flesh-eaters, persisting until the middle of the Miocene.