Cave hyena

Cave hyena
Temporal range: Middle to Late Pleistocene, 0.5–0.020 Ma
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Crocuta crocuta spelaea skeleton from the Muséum de Toulouse.
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Suborder: Feliformia
Family: Hyaenidae
Genus: Crocuta
Species:
C. crocuta
Subspecies:
†C. c. spelaea
Trinomial name
†Crocuta crocuta spelaea
Goldfuss, 1823

Cave hyena (Crocuta (crocuta) spelaea and Crocuta (crocuta) ultima) are extinct species or subspecies of hyena known from Eurasia, which ranged from Western Europe to eastern Asia and Siberia during the Pleistocene epoch. It is well represented in many European caves, primarily dating to the Last Glacial Period. It was an apex predator that preyed on large mammals (primarily large ungulates), and was responsible for the accumulation of hundreds of large Pleistocene mammal bones in areas including horizontal caves, sinkholes, mud pits, and muddy areas along rivers.

Often treated as subspecies or populations of the living African spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) to which they were closely related and heavily resembled, genetic evidence from the nuclear genome suggests that Eurasian Crocuta populations (including the west Eurasian Crocuta crocuta spelaea and Asian Crocuta crocuta ultima) were highly genetically divergent from African populations (having estimated to have split over 1 million years ago), with evidence suggesting limited interbreeding between Eurasian cave and African spotted hyenas.[1] Some authors have suggested that the two subspecies should be raised to species level as Crocuta spelaea and Crocuta ultima.[2]

Cave hyenas coexisted in Europe alongside both Neanderthals and modern humans. Evidence suggests that they consumed the remains of Neanderthals at least on occasion, with cave hyenas also being recorded in cave art.

The cause of the cave hyena's extinction is not fully understood, though it could have been due to a combination of factors, including human activity, diminished quantities of prey animals, and climate change.[3]

  1. ^ Westbury, Michael V.; Hartmann, Stefanie; Barlow, Axel; Preick, Michaela; Ridush, Bogdan; Nagel, Doris; Rathgeber, Thomas; Ziegler, Reinhard; Baryshnikov, Gennady; Sheng, Guilian; Ludwig, Arne; Wiesel, Ingrid; Dalen, Love; Bibi, Faysal; Werdelin, Lars (2020-03-13). "Hyena paleogenomes reveal a complex evolutionary history of cross-continental gene flow between spotted and cave hyena". Science Advances. 6 (11): eaay0456. Bibcode:2020SciA....6..456W. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aay0456. ISSN 2375-2548. PMC 7069707. PMID 32201717.
  2. ^ Lewis, Margaret E.; Werdelin, Lars (2022-04-14). "A revision of the genus Crocuta (Mammalia, Hyaenidae)". Palaeontographica Abteilung A. 322 (1–4): 1–115. Bibcode:2022PalAA.322....1L. doi:10.1127/pala/2022/0120. ISSN 0375-0442.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Hindcasting was invoked but never defined (see the help page).