Ancodonta is an infraorder of artiodactyl ungulates including modern hippopotamus and all mammals closer to hippos than to cetaceans (whales).

The last continent is notable as they were among the first laurasiatherian mammals to have migrated to Africa from Europe, where they competed with the native afrothere herbivores for the same niches.

However many detailed research of the dentition among ancodonts, as well as how some anthracotheres were similar to hippos in appearance, lead the current consensus where Anthracotheriidae is paraphyletic to Hippopotamidae.

[1] The placement of Ancodonta among the artiodactyls originally based on basic morphological work that they were the sister group to pigs and peccaries, placed in the suborder Suiformes.

This led to some theories that the last common ancestors of hippos and whales was a semiaquatic mammal, but in a 2015 genomic study that compared the genes responsible in aquatic adaptations within Whippomorpha found it to be the result of convergent evolution, as opposed to shared ancestry.