Pachycrocuta

Live reconstruction of a Pachycrocuta in the Hungarian Natural History Museum

• Europe
• Asia (China)
• Africa

Pachycrocuta is an extinct genus hyenas, who lived in the Pliocene and Pleistocene of Africa and Eurasia. It is the largest hyena species that ever existed. Originally, these large hyenas of the genus Hyaena were attributed to the today's brown hyenas and striped hyenas are.

Features

With a shoulder height of about one meter in Pachycrocuta brevirostris this giant hyena reached almost the size of a lion. The weight is estimated at 113 kg or even more. In overall appearance it was very similar to the large skull, the sloping topline and long muscular neck to the typical present-day hyenas. The head -body length was approximately 1.5 m.

Types and distribution

Pachycrocuta is known from Africa, Europe and Asia. In Asia it came prior to Java and to northern China, where particularly well-preserved remains of the kind Pachycrocuta brevirostris were found at the site Zhoukodian in Beijing. In Europe, came the genus with Pachycrocuta pyrenaica, which was first described in southern France, has been available since the early Miocene. Your predecessor was probably a close relative of the genus Hyaenictitherium. During the Pliocene, about 3.2 million years ago, this form has been replaced here by the more modern type Pachycrocuta perrieri. In the latest Pliocene appeared with Pachycrocuta brevirostris the largest species and repressed now turn its predecessor. Pachycrocuta emerged in Africa for the first time in the Pliocene around 3 million years ago, and survived here until the early Pleistocene. In Eurasia is the genus to 500,000 years ago, that is into middle Pleistocene detected. According to other sources Pachycrocuta brevirostris survived in southern China until the late Pleistocene. The extinction of species is brought, among others, with the extinction of the large saber-toothed cats such as the genus Homotherium in connection since disappeared even large carcasses as a food source by the lack of large predators.

Swell

• Jordi Augusti, Mauricio Antón: Mammoths, Sabertooths, and Hominids. 65 Million Years of Mammalian Evolution in Europe. Columbia University Press, New York, NY, inter alia, 2002, ISBN 0-231-11640-3.