Phlaocyon

Phlaocyon (from Greek phlao, "eat greedily" and cyon, "dog") is an extinct genus of the Borophaginae subfamily of canids native to North America. It lives from the Early Oligocene to the Early Miocene epoch 33.3–16.3 Mya, existing for approximately . It is closely related to Cynarctoides.

==Phylogeny== When discovered in the 19th century and during the following decades, Phlaocyon was thought to be ancestral to raccoons because of shared convergent adaptations toward hypocarnivorous dentitions, but was the first to discover the canid nature of the middle ear region in P. leucosteus and Phlaocyon in now believed to be part of very diverse clade of hypocarnivorous canids, the Phlaocyonini, and only distantly related to raccoons.