Pachycrocuta

xiquinhosilva · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikidata/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- brown hyaenaPBDB
- Sits inside
- HyaenidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Hyaenidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Hyaenidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 4.5 million years on record.
The record covers at least 5.333 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 11.63 Mya to 11.7 ka.
64 occurrences of Pachycrocuta on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
64 occurrences- Miocene2%
- Pliocene16%
- Pleistocene81%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
11 formations
- Gerakarou Formation · Premygdonian Group2
- Yuanmou Formation2
- Hadar Formation · Awash Group1
- Chemeron Formation1
- Lukeino Formation1
- Sterkfontein Formation · Transvaal Group1
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The named rock units Pachycrocuta has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 51 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Pachycrocuta and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Pachycrocuta and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
739 taxa- Equus22 sites
- Cervus20 sites
- Stephanorhinus etruscus19 sites
- Bison18 sites
- Mammuthus meridionalis17 sites
- Felis16 sites
- Leptobos16 sites
- Allohippus stenonis15 sites
- Canis etruscus14 sites
- Gazella14 sites
- Eucladoceros13 sites
- Hystrix11 sites
- Ursus etruscus11 sites
- Bovidae10 sites
- Homotherium crenatidens10 sites
- Mimomys10 sites
- Canis9 sites
- Meles9 sites
- Panthera gombaszoegensis9 sites
- Homotherium8 sites
- Sus8 sites
- Xenocyon lycaonoides8 sites
- Allocricetus7 sites
- Canis lupus7 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 61 sites for Pachycrocuta, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
50 references- The fossil and living Hyaenidae of Africa: present status6
- The Latest Villfranchian faunas in Italy - the Pirro Nord local fauna (Apricena, Gargano)4
- Mittelpleistozane Saugetierfaunen aus Mitteleuropa - der Versuch einer biostratigraphischen Zuordnung3
- Predators and scavengers in Early Pleistocene southern Asia2
- Upper Cenozoic bio-magnetic stratigraphy of Central Asian mammalian localities2
- Excavations at Panxian Dadong, Guizhou Province, Southern China2
- Identification of the Yuanmou fossil-man strata; study of the Yuanmou Formation2
- Revision d'un site paleontologique celebre: Saint-Prest (Chartres, France)1
- Reidentifications and synonymies of Eurasian faunas1
- Reidentifications and synonomies of European mammals1
- Carnivores of the Khapry faunal assemblage and their stratigraphic implications1
- The jaguar - Panthera onca gombaszoegensis (Kretzoi, 1938) (Carnivora: Felidae) in the late Lower Pleistocene Akhalkalaki (South Georgia: Transcaucasia) and its evolutionary and ecological significance.1
Each of the 64 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 38 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Pachycrocuta
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- xiquinhosilva
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Pachycrocuta was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itHyaenidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Kretzoi 1938