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Description

A pack of wolf-sized bear-dogs (Daphoenodon robustus) are aiming to isolate a calf from its mother, unfortunately for them the mother is a 800 kg entelodont, Daeodon shoshonensis, New Mexico, 20 million years ago.
Entelodonts were some of the most formidable and vicious predators from the early Cenozoic, lasting from 45 to 19 million years ago and were widespread across Euroasia and North America. They varied in size but always sported the iconic body plan that could best be described as a bison with a head intermediate between a hippo and a boar. While traditionally identified as close relatives of pigs, nowadays they are recognized as cetancodontamorps, the same group that includes whales, Andrewsarchus, hippos and their antracothere ancestors. Entelodonts are basal members of the group and thus have no close modern relatives.
They were omnivores, eating both plants and carrion as well as catching live prey. They were fast runners and their immense jaws were incredibly powerful and capable of chomping down as hard as a hippo or crocodile. And like with their hippo relatives, there’s plenty of evidence of interspecies aggression within entelodonts, including bite marks to the head, showing that entelodonts, especially males, settled their disputes in a very similar manner to modern hippos.

Daeodon shoshonensis was one of the largest, growing to the size of an American bison, and one of the very last, having ruled North America as its alpha predator for nearly 10 million years, hunting large chalicotheres like Moropus and rhinos such as Diaceratherium, before dying out around 19 million years ago.
Daphoenin bear-dogs coexisted with entelodonts in North America throughout their entire reign, these early pioneers were heralding a new age where carnivoran mammals would finally take over from the entelodonts and creodonts, and the extinction of Daeodon was soon followed by the arrival of larger and more powerful forms of bear-dogs, the amphicyonins such as the giant Amphicyon, who arrived via the Bering land bridge from Siberia and quickly seized control as the continent’s new top predators throughout most of the Miocene.

The scenario shown here is based on grey wolves hunting bison, a very risky move for the small bear-dogs to test the wrath of a Daeodon but the same goes for wolves taking on a bison. In both cases the predators don’t directly attack their quarry but rather hackle it relentlessly for hours, trying to confuse it and wear it down from exhaustion while trying to catch the small calf.

I've seen depicitons of mother entelodonts with multiple calves, but I doubt that was the case in real life as large ungulates, including hippos and whales, tend to give birth to one calf at a time.

Description

A pack of wolf-sized bear-dogs (Daphoenodon robustus) are aiming to isolate a calf from its mother, unfortunately for them the mother is a 800 kg entelodont, Daeodon shoshonensis, New Mexico, 20 million years ago.
Entelodonts were some of the most formidable and vicious predators from the early Cenozoic, lasting from 45 to 19 million years ago and were widespread across Euroasia and North America. They varied in size but always sported the iconic body plan that could best be described as a bison with a head intermediate between a hippo and a boar. While traditionally identified as close relatives of pigs, nowadays they are recognized as cetancodontamorps, the same group that includes whales, Andrewsarchus, hippos and their antracothere ancestors. Entelodonts are basal members of the group and thus have no close modern relatives.
They were omnivores, eating both plants and carrion as well as catching live prey. They were fast runners and their immense jaws were incredibly powerful and capable of chomping down as hard as a hippo or crocodile. And like with their hippo relatives, there’s plenty of evidence of interspecies aggression within entelodonts, including bite marks to the head, showing that entelodonts, especially males, settled their disputes in a very similar manner to modern hippos.

Daeodon shoshonensis was one of the largest, growing to the size of an American bison, and one of the very last, having ruled North America as its alpha predator for nearly 10 million years, hunting large chalicotheres like Moropus and rhinos such as Diaceratherium, before dying out around 19 million years ago.
Daphoenin bear-dogs coexisted with entelodonts in North America throughout their entire reign, these early pioneers were heralding a new age where carnivoran mammals would finally take over from the entelodonts and creodonts, and the extinction of Daeodon was soon followed by the arrival of larger and more powerful forms of bear-dogs, the amphicyonins such as the giant Amphicyon, who arrived via the Bering land bridge from Siberia and quickly seized control as the continent’s new top predators throughout most of the Miocene.

The scenario shown here is based on grey wolves hunting bison, a very risky move for the small bear-dogs to test the wrath of a Daeodon but the same goes for wolves taking on a bison. In both cases the predators don’t directly attack their quarry but rather hackle it relentlessly for hours, trying to confuse it and wear it down from exhaustion while trying to catch the small calf.

I've seen depicitons of mother entelodonts with multiple calves, but I doubt that was the case in real life as large ungulates, including hippos and whales, tend to give birth to one calf at a time.