Percrocuta
Name:
Percrocuta
(Thorough hyena).
Phonetic: Per-cro-cu-tah.
Named By: Miklos Kretzoi - 1938.
Synonyms: Capsatherium
Classification: Chordata, Mammalia, Carnivora,
Percrocutidae.
Species: P. abessalomi, P.
giganteus, P. hebeiensis, P. miocenica.
Diet: Carnivore.
Size: Around 1.5 meters long.
Known locations: Across Africa and Asia with
countries including Algeria, China, Ethiopia, Libya, Russia,
Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey.
Time period: Langhian of the Miocene through to
Zanclean/Piacenzian of the Pliocene.
Fossil representation: Multiple specimens though
often of partial remains.
The
hyenas had their origin in ancient genera such as Ictitherium,
but by
the Miocene exceptionally large forms such as Percrocuta
had already
evolved into a more recognisably hyena form. Percrocuta
possessed
robust skull and jaws with attachment points that would have allowed
for a powerful bite. The rear teeth of Percrocuta
however were more
adapted for slicing than crunching, something that might suggest a
lifestyle that had more of a shift towards predation than actual
scavenging (although modern hyenas are known to be perfectly capable
of killing their own food rather than rely upon scavenging alone).
Percrocuta
likely filled a similar ecological niche as todays spotted hyena
(Crocuta crocuta), living and hunting in grassy
plains
ecosystems. Today the spotted hyena lives alongside big cats such as
lions, leopards and cheetahs, but Percrocuta
instead lived
alongside the ecological forerunners of modern big cats, the
barbourofelids.
These later would have been replaced by other
predators such as true sabre-toothed cats such as Machairodus.
Also
while the spotted hyena lives alongside populations of wild dogs,
Percrocuta likely came into contact with amphicyonids
(popularly
known as bear dogs).
Pack
hunting and living in social groups is still hard to establish with
certainty for Percrocuta, though given the
behaviour of its modern
relatives, it is at least considered more probable than solitary
living.
Further reading
- The Late Cenozoic Carnivora of the South-Western Cape Province. -
Annals of the South African Museum 63:1-369. - Q. B. Hendey - 1974.
- Miocene mammals from Jiulongkou, Ci Xian County, Hebei Province.
Vertebrata PalAsiatica (= Gujizhui dongwu yu gurenlei) 14(1):6-15. - G.
Chen & W. Wu - 1976.
- A new species of Percrocuta from Tongxin, Ningxia. - Vertebrata
PalAsiatica 26(2):116-127. - Z. Qiu & J. Cao - 1988.
- The Carnivora (Mammalia) from the middle Miocene locality of
Gračanica (Bugojno Basin, Gornji Vakuf, Bosnia and Herzegovina). -
Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments. 100 (2): 307–319. -
Katharina Bastl, Doris Nagel, Michael Morlo & Ursula B. Göhlich
- 2020.
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