Context: Promerycochoerus ( `` Before Merycochoerus '' or `` Before Ruminating Hog '' ) is an extinct genus of hippopotamus - like oreodont artiodactyl that lived in Central North America during the Early Miocene . The 1 m ( 3 ft 4 in ) long creature is thought to have been amphibious , as all species possessed an elongated , barrel - shaped body and short limbs that are typical adaptations found in semi-aquatic mammals . P. superbus had a long tapir - like face , while P. carrikeri had a short , somewhat pig - like face ., The Neogene is a geologic period and system that spans 20.45 million years from the end of the Paleogene Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the present Quaternary Period Mya. The Neogene is sub-divided into two epochs, the earlier Miocene and the later Pliocene. Some geologists assert that the Neogene cannot be clearly delineated from the modern geological period, the Quaternary., A genus ( genera) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms in biology. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial species name for each species within the genus., Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, (14 November 1797  22 February 1875) was a British lawyer and the foremost geologist of his day. He is best known as the author of "Principles of Geology", which popularized James Hutton's concepts of uniformitarianismthe idea that the Earth was shaped by the same processes still in operation today. "Principles of Geology" also challenged theories popularized by Georges Cuvier, which were the most accepted and circulated ideas about geology in England at the time., Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country in Africa and a founding member of the East African Community (EAC). Its capital and largest city is Nairobi. Kenya's territory lies on the equator and overlies the East African Rift covering a diverse and expansive terrain that extends roughly from Lake Victoria to Lake Turkana (formerly called Lake Rudolf) and further south-east to the Indian Ocean. It is bordered by Tanzania to the south and southwest, Uganda to the west, South Sudan to the north-west, Ethiopia to the north and Somalia to the north-east. Kenya covers , and had a population of approximately 45 million people in July 2014., The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's oceans with a total area of about . It covers approximately 20 percent of the Earth's surface and about 29 percent of its water surface area. It separates the "Old World" from the "New World"., Cetacea are a widely distributed and diverse clade of aquatic mammals that today consists of the whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Cetaceans are carnivorous and finned. Most species live in the sea, some in rivers. The name is derived from the Latin "cetus" "whale" and Greek "ketos" "huge fish"., North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, and to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea., A rhinoceros (meaning "nose horn"), often abbreviated to rhino, is one of any five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae, as well as any of the numerous extinct species. Two of these extant species are native to Africa and three to Southern Asia., Elephants are large mammals of the family Elephantidae and the order Proboscidea. Two species are traditionally recognised, the African elephant ("Loxodonta africana") and the Asian elephant ("Elephas maximus"), although some evidence suggests that African bush elephants and African forest elephants are separate species ("L. africana" and "L. cyclotis" respectively). Elephants are scattered throughout sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Elephantidae is the only surviving family of the order Proboscidea; other, now extinct, members of the order include deinotheres, gomphotheres, mammoths, and mastodons. Male African elephants are the largest extant terrestrial animals and can reach a height of and weigh . All elephants have several distinctive features, the most notable of which is a long trunk or proboscis, used for many purposes, particularly breathing, lifting water, and grasping objects. Their incisors grow into tusks, which can serve as weapons and as tools for moving objects and digging. Elephants' large ear flaps help to control their body temperature. Their pillar-like legs can carry their great weight. African elephants have larger ears and concave backs while Asian elephants have smaller ears and convex or level backs., Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara desert. According to the UN, it consists of all African countries that are fully or partially located south of the Sahara. It contrasts with North Africa, whose territories are part of the League of Arab states within the Arab world. Somalia, Djibouti, Comoros and Mauritania are geographically in Sub-Saharan Africa, but are likewise Arab states and part of the Arab world., Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. They are an informal grouping within the infraorder Cetacea, usually excluding dolphins and porpoises. Whales, dolphins and porpoises belong to the order Cetartiodactyla with even-toed ungulates and their closest living relatives are the hippopotamuses, having diverged about 40 million years ago. The two parvorders of whales, baleen whales (Mysticeti) and toothed whales (Odontoceti), are thought to have split apart around 34 million years ago. The whales comprise eight extant families: Balaenopteridae (the rorquals), Balaenidae (right whales), Cetotheriidae (the pygmy right whale), Eschrichtiidae (the gray whale), Monodontidae (belugas and narwhals), Physeteridae (the sperm whale), Kogiidae (the dwarf and pygmy sperm whale), and Ziphiidae (the beaked whales)., A continent is one of several very large landmasses on Earth. Generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, up to seven regions are commonly regarded as continents. Ordered from largest in size to smallest, they are: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia. In geology, areas of continental crust include regions covered with water., The common hippopotamus ("Hippopotamus amphibius"), or hippo, is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae, the other being the pygmy hippopotamus ("Choeropsis liberiensis" or "Hexaprotodon liberiensis"). The name comes from the ancient Greek for "river horse". After the elephant and rhinoceros, the common hippopotamus is the third-largest type of land mammal and the heaviest extant artiodactyl. Despite their physical resemblance to pigs and other terrestrial even-toed ungulates, the closest living relatives of the Hippopotamidae are cetaceans (whales, porpoises, etc.) from which they diverged about . The common ancestor of whales and hippos split from other even-toed ungulates around . The earliest known hippopotamus fossils, belonging to the genus "Kenyapotamus" in Africa, date to around ., The Miocene is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Sir Charles Lyell. Its name comes from the Greek words (', less) and (', new) and means "less recent" because it has 18% fewer modern sea invertebrates than the Pliocene. The Miocene follows the Oligocene Epoch and is followed by the Pliocene Epoch., Ungulates (pronounced ) are any members of a diverse group of primarily large mammals that includes odd-toed ungulates such as horses and rhinoceroses, and even-toed ungulates such as cattle, pigs, giraffes, camels, deer, and hippopotami. Most terrestrial ungulates use the tips of their toes, usually hoofed, to sustain their whole body weight while moving. The term means, roughly, "being hoofed" or "hoofed animal". As a descriptive term, "ungulate" normally excludes cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises), as they do not possess most of the typical morphological characteristics of ungulates, but recent discoveries indicate that they are descended from early artiodactyls. Ungulates are typically herbivorous (though some species are omnivorous, such as pigs), and many employ specialized gut bacteria to allow them to digest cellulose, as in the case of ruminants. They inhabit a wide range of habitats, from jungles, plains and rivers., A pig is any of the animals in the genus Sus, within the Suidae family of even-toed ungulates. Pigs include the domestic pig and its ancestor, the common Eurasian wild boar ("Sus scrofa"), along with other species; related creatures outside the genus include the peccary, the babirusa, and the warthog. Pigs, like all suids, are native to the Eurasian and African continents. Juvenile pigs are known as piglets. Pigs are highly social and intelligent animals., The pygmy hippopotamus ("Choeropsis liberiensis" or "Hexaprotodon liberiensis") is a small hippopotamid which is native to the forests and swamps of West Africa, primarily in Liberia with small populations in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Ivory Coast., Hexaprotodon is a genus of Hippopotamidae that is sometimes applied to the pygmy hippopotamus. Pygmy hippos may be classified as either "Choeropsis liberiensis" or "Hexaprotodon liberiensis". The name "Hexaprotodon" means "six front teeth" as some of the fossil forms have three pairs of incisors.
The genus Hexaprotodon also includes a number of rarely studied extinct species from Asia, sometimes labeled "Asian Hippopotami.", Invertebrates are animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a "backbone" or "spine"), derived from the notochord. This includes all animals apart from the subphylum Vertebrata. Familiar examples of invertebrates include insects; crabs, lobsters and their kin; snails, clams, octopuses and their kin; starfish, sea-urchins and their kin; and worms., Porpoises are a group of fully aquatic marine mammals that are sometimes referred to as mereswine, all of which are classified under the family Phocoenidae, parvorder Odontoceti (toothed whales). There are six extant species of porpoise. They are small toothed whales that are very closely related to oceanic dolphins. The most obvious visible difference between the two groups is that porpoises have shorter beaks and flattened, spade-shaped teeth distinct from the conical teeth of dolphins. Porpoises, and other cetaceans, belong to the clade Cetartiodactyla with even-toed ungulates, and their closest living relatives are the hippopotamuses, having diverged from them about 40 million years ago., Binomial nomenclature (also called binominal nomenclature or binary nomenclature) is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, although they can be based on words from other languages. Such a name is called a binomial name (which may be shortened to just "binomial"), a binomen or a scientific name; more informally it is also called a Latin name. The first part of the name identifies the genus to which the species belongs; the second part identifies the species within the genus. For example, humans belong to the genus "Homo" and within this genus to the species "Homo sapiens". The "formal" introduction of this system of naming species is credited to Carl Linnaeus, effectively beginning with his work "Species Plantarum" in 1753. But Gaspard Bauhin, in as early as 1623, had introduced in his book "Pinax theatri botanici" (English, "Illustrated exposition of plants") many names of genera that were later adopted by Linnaeus., In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system, such as an animal, plant, fungus, archaeon, or bacterium. All known types of organisms are capable of some degree of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development and homeostasis. An organism consists of one or more cells; when it has one cell it is known as a unicellular organism; and when it has more than one it is known as a multicellular organism. Most unicellular organisms are of microscopic scale and are thus loosely described as microorganisms. Humans are multicellular organisms composed of many trillions of cells grouped into specialized tissues and organs., Merycochoerus is an extinct genus of terrestrial herbivore of the family Merycoidodontidae (oreodont), endemic to North America during the Late Oligocene to Early Miocene (28.416.3 mya) existing for approximately ., The Sahara (", 'the Greatest Desert') is the largest hot desert and the third largest desert in the world after Antarctica and the Arctic. Its area of is comparable to the area of the United States., The Pliocene (also Pleiocene) Epoch is the epoch in the geologic timescale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58 million years BP. It is the second and youngest epoch of the Neogene Period in the Cenozoic Era. The Pliocene follows the Miocene Epoch and is followed by the Pleistocene Epoch. Prior to the 2009 revision of the geologic time scale, which placed the four most recent major glaciations entirely within the Pleistocene, the Pliocene also included the Gelasian stage, which lasted from 2.588 to 1.806 million years ago, and is now included in the Pleistocene., A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthparts adapted to rasping or grinding. Horses and other herbivores have wide flat teeth that are adapted to grinding grass, tree bark, and other tough plant material., Subject: promerycochoerus, Relation: parent_taxon, Options: (A) animal (B) area (C) areas (D) bacteria (E) balaenidae (F) cetacea (G) choeropsis (H) deer (I) elephantidae (J) elephas (K) hexaprotodon (L) hippopotamus (M) homo (N) idea (O) insects (P) mammal (Q) merycoidodontidae (R) mya (S) mysticeti (T) neogene (U) odontoceti (V) peccary (W) physeteridae (X) pig (Y) plant (Z) proboscidea ([) rhinoceros (\) starfish (]) ungulate (^) vertebrata (_) victoria (`) wild boar
Output: merycoidodontidae