Osmotherium spelaeum

Osmotherium spelaeum is an extinct skunk of Pleistocene North America and the only species of the genus Osmotherium, whose name joins Greek words for smell and beast, a smelly beast. The species name spelaeum is Latin for cave and refers to the sole locality where its remains have been found, Port Kennedy Bone Cave. The remains are fragmentary, yet its jaws are the most prominent of any skunk from that locality, and Edward Drinker Cope, who described it, discussed six different specimens while attributing some of them to Mephitis, to Brachyprotoma and to the now defunct genus Pelycictis. When a 2005 study by Wang and colleagues described Martinogale faulli, it recovered Osmotherium as a sister genus to Mephitis, which is the best current guide to where it sits among the skunks.