Ictitherium
| Ictitherium | ||||||||||||
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Skull of Ictitherium viverrinum in the American Museum of Natural History in New York |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| lower ( Serravallian ) to middle Miocene ( Messinian ) | ||||||||||||
| 12.7 to 5.3 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Ictitherium | ||||||||||||
| Wagner , 1848 | ||||||||||||
Ictitherium is an extinct genus of hyenas that waswidespread across Eurasia and Africa in the Miocene .
features
Ictitherium was more slender than today's hyenas. His legs were more graceful, the hind legs longer, so that the back line did not slope back as much as is typical for today's hyenas. The neck was longer, the skull less robust. Overall, the animals looked more like a long-legged civet (Viverrinae / Art epitheton viverrinum of the type species ) than a hyena. Ictitherium reached a shoulder height of 60 centimeters and a length of 1.2 meters.
The genus was placed in 1977 by Ginsburg in its own subfamily called Ictitheriinae within the Hyaenidae, and in 1982 Kurten re-classified it directly in the Hyaenidae.
species
- Ictitherium viverrinum (type species)
- Ictitherium syvalense
- ? Ictitherium arambourgi
- ? Ictitherium hipparionum
- ? Ictitherium orbingyi
- ? Ictitherium sinence
literature
- Alan Turner, Mauricio Antón: Evolving Eden. An Illustrated Guide to the Evolution of the African Large-Mammal Fauna. Columbia University Press, New York NY 2004, ISBN 0-231-11944-5 .
