Millions of years ago, long before mammoths and humans, the Carolinas were home to some strange animals that would probably scare the daylights out of most of us today.
Imagine saber-toothed cats, giant armadillos and a fearsome beast known as the "hell pig." It might sound like sci-fi, but this was the Southeast during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs — well after the dinosaurs, but before the Ice Ages.
A new permanent exhibit at the Museum of York County called "Before the Ice Ages: Miocene and Pliocene Beasts of the Southeast" brings this lost world to life. It opens this weekend, and the museum's longtime curator of natural history, Dr. Steve Fields, ed WFAE's Nick de la Canal to discuss.
Nick de la Canal: OK, let's start with the basics. When we say before the Ice Ages, what kind of world are we talking about? Like what did the Carolinas look like millions of years ago?
Steve Fields: Well, we think that during the earliest and mid part of the Miocene, it may have been somewhat similar to today, but what was really changing on a global scale was the climate.
It was getting cooler and it was getting drier and that really helped to expand the grassland habitats.
De la Canal: So this exhibit showcases some creatures that were roaming the grasslands at the time. One of them is the so-called "hell pig." What was that, and should we be grateful that it's extinct?
Fields: Well, first of all, the little explanation is in order. The hell pig is obviously a common name for — it's actually a group of of animals called entelodonts, and the largest of them was called daeodon, and that's a Greek word that means "hostile tooth" — so if that gives you any indication.
We're talking about something that really wasn't a true pig, it was actually more related to a hippopotamus.
And these things would have stood about shoulder-height with a human and were quite large, and I actually joke about it, that people who love to go hog hunting today and talk about the size of their wild boars that they've bagged — I think this will really resonate with the hog hunters who come to visit and see the daeodon, whom we have affectionately named "Diana."
De la Canal: Do we know why these creatures went extinct?
Fields: Well, we're talking about climate change here, and when climate changes, when the environment changes, there's really only three options available to the inhabitants of that environment: they either change, they migrate, or they go extinct.
So if they can't move into another area and they can't deal with the changing environment, extinction is the norm.
De la Canal: You have an extensive background studying ground sloths, mammals, even reptiles of the Carolinas. Were there any surprises or lesser-known species in this exhibit that people should watch for?
Fields: Besides the hell pig, I'm intrigued by an entire group of animals. If you looked at them, you would call them relatives of antelope or deer, but in fact they are a completely lost lineage that aren't related to either.
I'm gonna drop a 50-cent word on you here: scientists call them dromomerycids. These guys were very bizarre looking because they had these horn-like projections not only coming out of their heads but also off their noses. And so there were at least half a dozen of these dromomerycid species running around here as well.
De la Canal: Incredible. You mentioned climate change. I wanted to ask, why is this history important to tell, especially here in the Carolinas?
Fields: Well, climate change is a very hot topic these days. It has been polarized. It has been politicized, but scientifically speaking, climate change is nothing new. It's been going on as long as there's been an Earth to have a climate.
Now, the modern change that we appear to be seeing in climate, the rub there is, is that human impacted? And there's data out there to that, but I want people to realize that the world that we live in today was nothing like the world that was here during the Miocene, the Pliocene, or even the Pleistocene Ice Ages.
The new permanent exhibit "Before the Ice Ages: Miocene and Pliocene Beasts of the Southeast" opens at the Museum of York County on Saturday, June 14, 2025.
