  Wide field near-infrared (IR) surveys have revealed a population of galaxies
with very red optical$-$IR colors, which have been termed ``Extremely Red
Objects'' (EROs). Modeling suggests that such red colors (R-K > 5) could be
produced by galaxies at z>~1 with either very old stellar populations or very
high dust extinction. Recently it has been discovered that EROs are strongly
clustered. Are these objects the high-redshift progenitors of present day giant
ellipticals (gEs)? Are they already massive at this epoch? Are they the
descendents of the $z\sim3$ Lyman Break Galaxies (LBG), which have also been
identified as possible high redshift progenitors of giant ellipticals? We
address these questions within the framework of the Cold Dark Matter paradigm
using an analytic model that connects the number density and clustering or bias
of an observed population with the halo occupation function (the number of
observed galaxies per halo of a given mass). We find that EROs reside in
massive dark matter halos, with average mass <M> > 1E13/h100 Msun. The
occupation function that we derive for EROs is very similar to the one we
derive for z=0, L>L* early type galaxies, whereas the occupation function for
LBGs is skewed towards much smaller host halo masses (<M> ~ 1E11 to 1E12/h100
Msun. We then use the derived occupation function parameters to explore the
possible evolutionary connections between these three populations.
