Pachycrocuta was a genus of prehistoric hyenas. The largest and most well-researched species is Pachycrocuta brevirostris, colloquially known as the giant short-faced hyena as it stood about at the shoulder and it is estimated to have averaged in weight, approaching the size of a lioness, making it the largest known hyena. Pachycrocutafirst appeared during the late Pliocene, about 3 million years ago and became extinct during the middlePleistocene, 400,000 years ago.
Fossils
remains have been found broadly in Eurasia and southern and eastern Africa. Most material consists of fragmented remains, usually of the skull, but a cache of very comprehensive bone material was unearthed at the famous Zhoukoudian site, which probably represents the remains of animals using these caves as lairs for many millennia. At the western end of their former range, at Venta Micena in southeastern Spain, a huge assemblage of Pleistocene fossils also represents a den. Other proposed species, P. robusta and P. pyrenaica, are less well researched; the former may simply be an exceptionally large Europeanpaleosubspecies of the brown hyena, Hyaenabrunnea. Sometimes included in this genus is the extinct giant striped hyaena, Hyaena bellax.
Behaviour
Similar to the modern daystriped hyena, it was probably primarily a kleptoparasiticscavenger of the kills of other predators, such as sabertooth cats. Pachycrocuta scavenged for food, probably preferentially so, because it was a heavyset animal not built for chasing prey over long distances. In this respect 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 its smaller relative Pliocrocuta perrieri that they are never found as contemporary fossils in the same region. Research by anthropologists Noel Boaz and Russell Ciochon on remains of Homo erectus unearthed alongside Pachycrocuta at the Zhoukoudian site attributed scoring and puncture patterns observed on homininlong bones and skulls—originally thought to be signs of cannibalism—to predation by Pachycrocuta. It has been proposed that Pachycrocuta was outcompeted and driven to extinction by the spotted hyena, which was formerly present in Eurasia as well as Africa. Other predators, such as lions, cave lions, tigers and wolves, could have put pressure on it.
