Pachycrocuta
| Pachycrocuta Temporal range: Middle Pliocene to Middle Pleistocene
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| Genus: | Pachycrocuta
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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 and weighed up to 200 kg (the size of a small lioness), but 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 because was a very heavyset animal not built 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.
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)