Pachycrocuta

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Pachycrocuta
Fossil range: Late Pliocene - Middle Pleistocene

Extinct (fossil)

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Carnivora
Family:	Hyaenidae
Genus:	Pachycrocuta

Species

see text

Pachycrocuta was a genus of prehistoric giant short-faced hyenas. The largest and most well-researched (Turner & Antón, 1996) species, Pachycrocuta brevirostris, stood about 1 meter (39 in.) at the shoulder, the size of a small lion, but was much more stocky and muscular. This would make it the largest hyena to have ever lived. It lived between the Late Pliocene and the Middle Pleistocene, about 3 million to 500.000 years ago. Fossil remains have been found in many localities of Eurasia and southern and eastern Africa. Most material consists of fragmented remains, usually of the skull, but there has been a cache of very comprehensive bone material unearthed at the famous Zhoukoudian locallity which probably represents the remains of animals which used these caves as lairs for many millennia.

It probably was a small-pack hunter of large animals (up to deer size and occasionally larger) and also scavenged for food. Possibly it preferentially did the latter, driving contemporary big cats from their kills, as P. brevirostris was a very heavyset animal not build for chasing prey over long distances. In this aspect it would have differed from the Spotted Hyena of today which is a more nimble animal that contrary to its image as a scavenger usually kills its own food but often gets displaced by lions. Apparently it was ecologically close enough to the smaller (but still large) relative Pliocrocuta perrieri; they are never found as contemporary fossils in the same region.

Other proposed species, P. robusta and P. pyrenaica, are less well researched; the former may simply be an exceptionally large European paleosubspecies of the Brown Hyena. Sometimes included in this genus (as Pachycrocuta bellax) is the extinct giant striped hyaena, Hyaena bellax.

[edit] References

Turner, Alan & Antón, Mauricio (1996): The giant hyaena Pachycrocuta brevirostris (Mammalia, Carnivora, Hyaenidae). Geobios 29(4): 455-468. DOI:10.1016/S0016-6995(96)80005-2 (HTML abstract)